Then I'll Begin
by Garmonbozia
Summary: In the aftermath of their faux-double-suicide, Jim's a wreck.  His will to live, his zest for his work, even his enthusiasm for a really good suit, all gone on holiday.  But somebody's had enough of all this wallowing.  Time to get out of bed, Jim.
1. Loss

I broke into children's television for him. And if that's not your definition of hell, then you're a braver man than I am.

I'm just saying, right? The last eighteen months have been _pretty_ Sherlock-central for me. I mean, _layers_ upon _layers_ of story being gradually accumulated like dust in a fecking library and for _what_? A couple of weeks and it's all gone tumbling off a bleeding building. Don't even know if he _got_ it all, for God's sake. There could be a whole little back-up plan just glossed over, unexplored, a couple of months of my life just tucked in some corner somewhere because _he_ missed something.

How dare he jump off a fecking building when I still have treasures untold and glories undiscovered? I built it for him, around him, custom-fucking-purpose-built-and-tailored to _him_, nobody else is going to appreciate it like he would have.

Sad to relate, this is the thought I eventually fell asleep on, and this is the thought that has wakened me this morning.

And as has become customary, I reach up under the sheet and place a hand on the left side of my chest. And yeah, I'm still alive. Again. That keeps happening. I keeping waking up with a heartbeat and circulation and a functional respiratory system.

Cancer. Now there's a worthy adversary. Maybe I should take up smoking.

I swing a foot out of bed and kick over last night's tumbler. It chips, which is a pain in arse because it's really nice crystal and it's one of a set. And I know it's a pain in the arse, but I sit there looking at it, with the chip scattered on across the floor and the crack running through it and yeah, it's sad but I just can't, y'know… get _into_ it.

Before I've really thought about it I bring my heel down on it.

And then I've got a fecking big chunk of lead crystal in my heel and that's a bit better. I get into that. I swear and hop about and clutch my foot over that. Then the numbness hits and I go to the bathroom to pull it out. And shower. And shave.

God fucked up, y'know. I mean, if we really are cast in his image then I understand; that is a pissed off man inflicting his misery on his underlings. I understand that. But if all we actually are is some shaved simian spinoff, then the gent made a serious mistake, no offence to him. A human being is just too _high-maintenance_. So much needs to be _done_ to it. It all goes to shit so easily.

In fairness, I've been drinking a bit more than usual. Doing a bit of lying in bed.

But hey, that's natural. That's _grief_. It's going to be _at least_ a year before I'm likely to see any sign whatsoever of the only person left alive who is of any interest to me. I mean, do you know what that's _like_?

No, of course you don't. You've got rock stars and stand-up comedians and, fucking Christ preserve us, _loved ones_ to think of. Eejits… My point is, you lot will always have a distraction. That's my problem now, you see. Distractions. Something to _do_ for the next year. Drinking and lying in bed are only going to take me so far. I'm not so far gone I don't know that. Sooner or later, I'm going to need something to _do_.

What did I used to do before Sherlock?

Seriously. It's like trying to think what life was like before mobile phones, or when Star Wars was still a big thing or the first time Take That existed. How the _hell_ did I used to put my days in?

Standing in the kitchen, I perform the usual morning check. I think as clearly as I possibly can about steak and chips. If the thought does not immediately leave me vomiting into the sink, I can have breakfast. It also means I'm not nearly hungover enough and I really must do better tomorrow night.

Luckily for my liver, I am violently ill at the first half-remembered whiff of a caramelized onion.

Black coffee it is then. Can't say I'm too depressed about that. Black coffee and I have gotten to be good friends, this last week or so. We've usually fallen out by dinner time, but it's always there in the morning, waiting for me to come crawling back after another sordid night in the arms of Lady Liquor.

Oh, Jesus, I've gone mental…

This isn't even funny anymore. This doesn't even count as a holiday anymore. This is what finally drives me back to the computer. It's backed up a bit, if I'm honest. I just haven't been able to face it, you know?

The All-Request Lunch with Joe Public.

Oh, God, I'm going to be sick again…

No. Stop it, Jim. Swallow down, man, face this. There's bound to be something in all this _dross_ to hold your attention for more than twenty seconds.

About sixty seconds later I realize there's _really_ not.

The trial maybe wasn't the super-star-stellar idea it seemed like at the time. I had all the clients I could handle before, truth be told. I mean, truth, real _actual_ truth be told, it was more of a showing-off kind of a thing.

Not a jealous thing.

_Not_ a jealous thing, that's very important, I wasn't jealous, you must never believe that I was jealous and certainly not of that lanky twat, and all his press coverage, and all his high-profile stuff. If I wanted attention I could play the hero too, alright? This was never about attention. I wasn't jealous.

I _wasn't_.

Anyway, long story short, the old inbox is a bit full and it's pretty much all crap, crap and more crap.

Dear Mr Moriarty, steal my jewels.

Only if they're still attached to you, son. _Next_!

Dear Mr Moriarty, murder my ageing husband.

Why, because you're too lazy to ride him to death? Gold-digging whore, get off my computer this instant.

Assassinations, _crap_. Heists, _crap_. Political intrigues, crap on fecking toast, _oh_, God, no, don't think of toast, don't think of toast, don't think of solid food, _stupid_ man. Crap on a stick, that's what political intrigues are.

This all ends with my head on the keyboard. With me groaning periodically because it's all I can do. Or because I've just thought, in all seriousness and without a hint of irony, that I might just try and get Jeremy Kyle on catch-up TV. That's happened twice already since that whole rooftop thing, and that's why there are currently two televisions here in the Batcave which are no longer functional. The first just has a shoe in the screen. Which is fair enough, that happens. It happens when I'm sick, or if I just feel like throwing a shoe, or any time I'm watching something and I need a slash and they won't put a fucking advert on.

The other one, I must admit, worries me slightly. Because I got a bit cruel with the other one. In my own defence, it wasn't Jeremy Kyle, it was Loose Women, but that still probably wasn't just cause to dismantle the entire television and lay its insides out in separate pieces on the bed like modern art.

Yeah, television, my state of mind? Not a good idea.

_Why does he have to be dead?_

I only wanted him to kill himself, I didn't actually want him to be _dead_. Should've gone with the original plan and just killed all his friends. I wanted to see if I could make him go all dark and nasty. Only I was talking to this comic book forger in New York while I was planning it and he goes:

"Oh, like The Killing Joke."

And I goes:

"Excuse me?"

And apparently the Joker already tried that.

_Hence_, children's television.

And yes, it was much more inventive and satisfying and it put the days in for a year and a half, but now he has to be _dead_. At least for a little while. I really didn't think this one through, did I? I mean, in terms of me and where I end up. Where I end up is sitting in front of my computer meandering through heap upon hideous, mind-bending, soul-destroying _crap_.

Dr Mr Moriarty, I'm fucking an MP and I can tell you things.

No, darling, you can't, you really can't, I knew it all before he did.

Dr Mr Moriarty, are you by any chance looking for an apprentice?

…Apprentice. I trace the IP address on that one. Not because I'm interested, not because it strikes me as a possible time-killer, no, God, Christ, I can't think of anything more disgusting. No, I'm just going to have the fucker shot, that's all…

Jesus, Sherlock, come back, all is forgiven. I won't even kill anybody, we'll just do cat-and-mouse. I promise. Well, maybe the occasional murder, but only enough to keep things fresh. Swear. Scout's honour. May God strike me down if I tell a lie, I can be a marginally better man, but only if you're here to drive me to it. There's no motivation anymore. I've got my territory all to myself but what _good_ is it? It's no fun if you don't have to defend it from anybody. And let's face it, Sherlock, nobody else comes close. Nobody does it better.

Makes me feel sad for… well, mostly myself, actually.

Aw, God, I'm singing Carly Simon to myself in an empty house, man, _what more convincing do you need_?

I want a drink…

No, it's half-eleven in the morning, I don't want a drink. No. No. What I want to do is lift up my head, rub the keyboard imprint off my cheek, and look one last time at the last page of the Requests.

Dear Mr Moriarty – crap. Could you fix it for me to – crap. Need your assistance with – crap. Stand to make a fortune from – crap. I live next door to – crap. Most impossible mystery – crap. I need to – crap.

Fucking high-maintenance human body more trouble than it's worth.

But it's in the bathroom that I think back (can't help but think back; bathrooms are the single largest source of wasted time in human history, did you know that?) to what I was just going through there.

Something I might have glazed over there.

_Shit_.

Back to the computer and into the deleted files and I have to go through all that crap trying to find it again but there it is and yeah, I was right. It _was_ interesting. A possible diamond in a heap of shite.

_I live next door to_- it begins.

And goes on – _a dead man. And I bet you know who it is._

Signed by somebody calling themselves, _Captain Tuxedo_. Of all the bloody pseudonyms to pick… But still, it triggers a thought in me. Which hasn't happened much, these couple of weeks. Just a quick little thought, but a nice one. One I haven't had in a while, too. One that makes me look at that brief little message from every angle, start to poke it about a bit, shake whatever I can out of it.

A quick little thought, and a tug in the old cardiac that I don't want getting out of hand just yet:

_Sexy_…


	2. The Telephone

Aw, Jesus, I need to change that ringtone. It's not doing any good anymore, I'm taunting nobody but myself. All of this made worse by the fact that the phone is somewhere in the bed, and I kick about looking for it, and I kick it onto the floor, and then I have to sort of writhe round and I answer the words, "This had better be worth the trouble it took me to answer the fucking thing."

"Are you alive?"

"…Moran? Moran, y'loon, of course I'm alive, that was the point. Jesus, it was two weeks ago, I wouldn't like to be depending on you finding the corpse. What sort of a question is that anyway? 'Are you alive'? Answered the fucking phone, didn't I?"

It's ten o'clock in the morning. _Ten_. I haven't seen a ten a.m since the bloody trial, for Christ's sake. This was _not_ worth it. Men have died for less, Sebastian, and horribly, and with perpetual screams carved on their faces.

"You told me to keep checking if you were alive afterward."

"Oh…" I suppose if I told him to I can't exactly have him killed for it. That sounds less than honourable, somehow. "Well, _yeah_, I'm alive. Can I go back to sleep now, is that alright by you?"

"When do you want me to check in again?"

"…I don't _know_. Couple of days, maybe? _No_, wait…" I had something to do. I have this feeling in the back of my head like I had something to do and then I decided not to be bothered but now I'm thinking I should probably give it a go "Moran, don't be arsed. I'm getting up. Going looking for somebody, so I'll probably be alright now."

"_Looking_ for somebody?"

"It's a _job_, y'twat. Somebody called Captain Tuxedo. Have you ever heard it before?"

"No. And I think I'd remember."

"Then what fucking use are you, then? Good night."

I _think_ I manage to end the call. Mostly I throw the phone away. Either way, the conversation's over. And I put my head back down on one pillow, tuck the other up under my arm and my chin and pull the sheet over my head. And it's dark again, and warm again, and I close my eyes again, and the only thing fucking missing is the actual falling asleep again.

Captain Tuxedo lives next door to a famous dead man. I bet Captain Tuxedo isn't still in bed. I bet he's up and about and cursing and kicking the world that left him with a stupid name like Captain Tuxedo.

Oh, yeah, it's a man. I figured all this out yesterday when I was still enamoured with the idea the first time. And then I got bored, but then I thought maybe I'd look into it again, and then I couldn't find anything, so I got bored, and then I went to bed.

In my own defence, yesterday was still my most productive day since I died that time.

But yeah, from the tone of the message, the familiarity of it, it's a man. Probably a bit of a mental case. Thinks that he and I are 'alike', in some way. I know the type. You'd be surprised how many of the type you meet in this business. They all want to think they're like me. This, ironically for them and hilariously for me, is usually about the only thing keeping them from _actually_ being like me. No, the very fact that Captain Tuxedo felt the need to get in touch gives away that, beyond the basic information mentioned in the message, he's not going to have very much to offer me.

Also it means I have to go to Brighton.

I mean… _Brighton_.

Brighton might have been the bit that made me lose interest yesterday. Brighton makes me almost stay in bed awake. I can do that. I've gotten awfully good at that, lately. I can see the appeal of recreational lying-in to the depressed or unemployed, or the technically-dead-plus-suddenly-both-of-the-above.

I had to leave New York because it was too fucking small. The only reason I ever moved to London was _him_. I mean… _Brighton_.

Get up, Jim.

I try thinking it really, really loudly and nothing happens.

"Fecking get up, you useless fecking arsehole of a man."

No, still nothing.

Catch more flies with honey, don't you? "Jim, seriously, this isn't good for you. Bit of sea air do you good. Chips. Simple pleasures, last refuge of the something-fecking-something, bloody Wilde, never heard anything more Irish in my life, you ponce-" And somehow this nice, monotonous, pointless commentary moves me off the edge of the mattress, around the wreckage of the tumbler I stamped on yesterday and thus out of bed. Where I stand for a moment with my arms flung open, and consider taking a bow, except that my head is thumping.

That's it. I'm never having a hangover again. I'll just refuse. I'll wait up, and when drunk starts to turn to sick, I will hold up my hand and bolt the door and just say, 'No thanks, none for me, please. I'm Irish.'

And then I'll figure out how that works and I'll sell it.

First, though, I'm going to Brighton. And I'm going incognito. Not sure what I'm going to dress up as yet, but I'm dressing all the way up, I'm telling you. I'm going to wear a captain's hat and a tuxedo and let the rank bastard come to me. Also, it makes it easier to use public transport, if people aren't going, Ooh, that's that criminal mastermind only he wasn't (only he is, y'fools), poor lad.

Oh yeah.

Oh, I'm going to Brighton in disguise _on a train_.

And on that train, during that hour-and-fifteen minutes or so, I am going to destroy somebody's life so completely that little shreds will fall off their harrowed soul as they walk away from me, and I'll collect them all up and they will strengthen me to endure _Brighton_.

Also it will cheer me right the fuck up.

What do they have in Brighton? I muse on this over my cornflakes. Cornflakes, by the way, are the answer to the great riddle that is grief. Sustenance without effort, equally welcome at either end of the day. The man who invented cornflakes, I can almost guarantee you, had had a truly terrible life. Or was a depressive.

But yeah, cornflakes aside, what's Brighton about? Like, starlings and gay guys and old people… They used to have mods, didn't they? Do they still have mods? I think I could probably stand it if there were mods. I quite like The Who. They probably don't still have mods. I could go a bit mod, though. A bit modern mod, a bit just-on-the-straight-side-of-Franz-Ferdinand. I have a parka somewhere… I think.

This is a lot of trouble.

I'm just realizing that now. This is whole bloody pile of effort and energy expenditure.

And this, _I'm just realizing now_, is _detection_. This is not my usual bag at all. Chasing off after some mysterious contact who maybe knows something and probably doesn't and might be a mental case and lives in the _arse_ of nowhere like Brighton. This is _detective_ work.

What has _happened_ to me? It's like I cocooned up in my bed and emerged as…

Christ Jesus, I can't even think it.

Right, that's it. I do this, I get it out of my system and then I mug a granny or something, but I need to get back to myself after this one.

And if Captain Tuxedo doesn't have anything useful for me then I am going to delete him so thoroughly from existence that God himself will forget the day that he was born. He will see the words Captain Tuxedo carved upon the palm of his hand, like my granny told me everybody is, and he'll think, "There's that St Peter having a giraffe again," and score it out.

But I'm definitely not doing some weird gestalt with a dead man. That's not part of my grieving process. I've grieved before.

No. Wait… Do pets count?

Christ, I wonder if Mum's still going…

_Why _am I even thinking that? I haven't thought that since I told her to fuck off and never call me again.

Don't. Don't do that whole 'isn't he terrible' face at each other, like I'm not even here. We know I'm terrible, that's the whole premise of the fucking thing. That's why it's _so bloody disturbing that I'm thinking of her_!

Finding the parka's not going to take more than twenty minutes. So call that an hour for dress and disguise.

Best train to take if I want to get somebody I can really destroy is a half-empty train. The kind of people who can afford to travel in the middle of the day, but also have the free time to travel in the middle of the day.

Best train's not for two and a half hours.

Okay, this isn't going to take two-and-a-half hours. And it's not going to become a regular thing. In fact, it's probably never going to happen again. And the number's still in the phone book, so that's no problem.

Yeah. Okay. While everything's balls-up and tits-to-the-fucking-wind anyway, let's do this too. Let's just make this _the_ most surreal morning I've had to suffer in a long while. Right. Fine.

Telephone.

Number.

Hang up, look up ROI call-code again, redial.

Ring-ring.

Hang up.

Shuffle off very quickly in direction of bed, taking both cornflakes and Bushmills.

Telephone rings.

"…Hello?"

"Were you calling this number, mister?" Oh my God, she still calls people Mister as a matter of course. Oh, Jesus, it's her. Why hasn't she _moved_? Why didn't she do _something_? Oh, now I have to change my number.

"I… I got a digit wrong, Mum sorry."

Shit, I called her Mum. It's not my fault, I'm not a proper person. I'm overhung and overtired.

"Jimmy?" No. No, Mum, not in a long lot of years. "Now why would you be calling me again, y'yellow bastard?" I think I missed a trick, back at the trial? I should have called her as a character witness. It lessens the impact of not calling any witnesses or having any defence at all, but to be honest, it would probably have been more impressive if I'd gotten away with it after they heard all the things she had to say about me. "I saw you in the papers, y'sleekit get. I always said that was where you were going to end up."

"What, children's television?"

"And lying about that nice gentleman." Oh, my Christ, she means Sherlock. She _does_ too, she means Sherlock. "That's on _your_ conscience, you know, son, that blood's on _your_ hands." She _knows_. My mother _knows_. This could very well be the moment to _actually_ blow my brains out for real this time. Call Sebastian back and tell him to check for a corpse. No rush, really, just before I go smelly. "But _go on then_, what'd y'call me for?"

"…Are you alive, Mum?"

"What sort of a fecking question is that to ask your own m-"

"All I needed to know thanks bye."

Hang up. Hang up hard, like she can feel that, like she'll get the message. She won't, though.

And she doesn't. I don't even make it back to the _breakfast bar_, when the phone rings again.

There's no hello, no formalities. Just, "So is there money in that? Career criminal, I mean?"

"…_Never call this number again_. Or I will… Look, it won't be nice." I'm not on great form, this morning. Mum's never heard that one about turning her into shoes, I should have just used that. But I don't like reusing them, it feels lazy. Anyway, I'm proud of that one.

And I would _literally_ kill or die for a pair of Adler leather shoes. I thought I was getting her body off those Arabs that time for just this purpose, but then Lankylegs got in the way… Again.

Right. Time to get dressed.

She calls back. While I'm still standing there, she calls back.

So now I have to go to Brighton. At least until I can get my number changed.


	3. The Train

I'm on a train. In a parka. Strange being out of the flat after so long, but it's a good feeling. I think it's a good feeling anyway. Sort of like all that settled blood is getting up out of my feet and moving about again. That's good, isn't it? It's cold out here, though. Miss my duvet. Should've brought my duvet.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, I nearly feel better. I'm sure I would be feeling _much_ better if there had been some kind of nuclear apocalypse in between my withdrawal two weeks ago and my re-emergence this morning. As it is, there's loads of _people_ about. That train station, _Jesus_, Dante never dreamed of such a hell, and if he had he would have been driven out of his mind and never written a word again for fear of unleashing it upon reality. London, Mr Alighieri, London 2012 and here we are. This is the tenth ring.

They're just fucking _everywhere_. Everywhere you _look_, and behind all the little doors and then occasionally I'll look at a pillar because pillars are nice and safe and don't have fucking faces that make me sick, and one of them will step out from _behind_ the pillar and make me jump about six feet in the air.

And the _telephones_. All of them. Armed with telephones. Dozens more little people, little presences, carted about in their pockets, ready to be deployed as soon as I'm within range.

I mean, you _think_ you're sitting in between a stock-broker and a nursing student, right? But you're not. Not really. No, it's much more fucking crowded than that. You're actually on a seat on your own. On your left is a seat containing Johnson, a stockbroker, a Mr Whittaker I take to be his boss, Shauna, his lovely wife, two young daughters and Andy, the young fella from the office he's blowing on a weekly basis. So _that's_ uncomfortable.

On your right is a seat containing Michelle, the nursing student, Joanie, her best friend and Claire, her best enemy. By association there's also Michael, who must really be something because all three of them want to hit that, and Doctor Forbes who is, I am universally assured, a bitch. Then she hangs up and Michelle is alone, which is a bit nicer, until the fucking thing rings again and her dealer, Simon, shows up. That's not something she wants me to hear, nor something I have any desire to hear. But she _is_ sitting next to me which puts us in rather a bad position as far as that's concerned.

One marginally-acceptable thing about them both having their phones; I learn that they're both going all the way to Brighton.

Johnson or Michelle. Michelle or Johnson. …

Who deserves to live on in glorious blank ignorance of their own disgusting existence for another couple of days?

I could probably destroy both of them before we get there, but I haven't been working lately, and I don't want to push it. We'll ease back into it. One of the way down, maybe one on the pier, one on the train back. Then I'll be back in London and walking down a city street will sicken me and I'll be back on top. I'll be destroying them with simple glances. A flick of my eyes and their blinded eyes shall see the emptiness of their immortal souls and all that they are shall fall away. Something like that. Whatever.

I think it's because I was nearly able to do it to Sherlock, but even the idea of it doesn't get me excited anymore. I'm going to feel shit afterwards, aren't I? Not in an ooh-I'm-a-bad-person kind of way, just in a this-isn't-the-rush-it-used-to-be kind of way.

Johnson, on my right, takes out his _fecking_ phone and calls somebody named Bluebell about her plans for tonight.

I'm doing this for poor Shauna.

Well, I'm not, but if anybody ever asks me, that's the glib answer I'm going to give them.

So the train comes and we all get on. Johnson sits at a table on his own, and I sit facing him, but across the aisle. I let us get out of London, let him get stuck into his Financial Times, then take out my mobile like it just rang.

I'm glad it didn't, actually, I haven't changed that ringtone yet.

The trick is to act exactly as thought it's just rung. If everything else is there they won't notice the missing sound.

"Hello?" Then I lower my voice, and nervously glance around the compartment. Ensure that the last person my eyes land on is Johnson over there. That makes him look up, so that when I turn pointedly away, and he looks back to his paper, he's listening. "Hannah, I told you, you can't call me anymore. I don't do that anymore, alright?" I stop and Hannah says something impossibly alluring. I'm tempted for a moment and then I steel myself. "No. I'm getting through this, Caitlin and if you had any respect for me… _Hannah_, Hannah, I meant to say Hannah. … Nobody, Caitlin's nobody, she's just- Hannah, for fuck's sake-" She reacts to that in just the way you might expect. Some funny pun I can't be arsed thinking of on the expletive there. And I'm tempted again, and this time I let myself laugh. Then with a groan I make myself hang up and cast the phone away across the table.

Is he still listening?

He hasn't turned a page in five minutes, he's still listening.

After a few seconds of torment and indecision, I snatch up the phone again. Just for fun, I dial Sebastian rather than just pretending to dial a number.

"Hello?"

"Hiya. Listen, Joe-"

"Oh, so I'm Joe? I'm being Joe? Alright."

"Can you talk? Have you got a minute?"

"Well, what do I ever do but sit by the telephone and wait for you to need me?"

I'm going to knock his teeth down his throat next time I see him. "She called… One of them called."

"Which one? Captain Tuxedo? Captain Tuxedo's a she?"

Fecking idiot. "No, um… _Hannah_. She wanted to… Well, y'know…"

"Go for it, Jim. Might do you good after the last couple of-"

"_And yeah_, yeah, I was a bit tempted… I mean, after Caitlin…"

"Oh, you arrogant bastard. Are you pretending to be a sex addict? Am I your sponsor?"

"All for a good cause, Joe… Listen, can you just… just call me later. Just to make sure I don't call her back?"

"I told you, mate, you should go for it-"

"Thanks Joe, you're a pal." And I'm going to kick the back of your skull to a paste, flay the skin from your face and wear it round your ma's before the funeral, you useless twat… "Yeah, bye."

I hang up. Put my phone on the table. I let some time pass before I start to do the old clucking-junkie routine. The reaching out, but never picking it up. The foot tapping, the knee jumping, the constant swallowing on a dry throat. And I let that go on until we're about twenty minutes outside of Brighton

So I've got Johnson right where I want him. He's thinking, that poor fool, thinking it's a bad thing, letting himself get out of control. Thinking this could never happen to him. And envious, too, because of Hannah and Caitlin and the implication of all the rest.

This point reached, my phone 'rings' again. This time I pick it up and look at who's calling first. And I roll my head and sigh and groan, "Oh, Jesus." Then, "Hello? … No. No, Linda, you can't do that. Linda, I'm already on the train, you can't… That's not my fault, I couldn't get away from work. I _text_ you! Yes I did. _Yes_ I did. No, please, _please_, Linda, don't be like this. Linda? Hello?" She's hung up, by the way, has the wife. "Fucking bitch."

Ah, he's shifting now. He turns a page now alright, whether he's finished with the last one or not.

Oh Johnson, have you had that conversation? Have you suffered the buzz of that same dead line before? Well, I never could have guessed. I apologize, Johnson, if I, the stranger across the aisle, have tickled that raw nerve of yours. Oh, what's this over here? A cheese grater? Good thing I didn't have that in my hand last time, eh? Cheese grater on a raw nerve? Well, that'd make a grown man cry, Johnson, it truly would. And we wouldn't want that now, would we? No, no, no. That would not bring sunshine into anybody's black little heart on this strangest of days.

Where's your kill zone, Johnson? Her Indoors clearly does nothing for you, job's secure. Sexual satisfaction is the driving force I'm already addressing. Where's that last, most important Jenga brick in the tower? I need to remove something that's going to bring it all tumbling down.

Oh, come _on_. This is _me_, this is what I do. Problems, weaknesses, they usually jump out of me, highlighted and outlined in red and with a little asterix in the margin pointing to them and with the whole page surrounded by flashing lights and dancing girls.

No, Jim, you're a nympho, don't think about dancing girls, that's forbidden territory.

Seriously, though. What's wrong with me? This is the person that I am. I'm a planner. Sherlock can do everything afterward, he can reverse-engineer the process out of the facts but _me_, I'm the one who actually puts things there. I see the problems in advance, cover all the angles. I'm the bloody clever one, or I _was_, anyway. Now, apparently, I'm all limp and useless like Johnson gets around dear Shauna.

What's the matter with me?

Salt in the fucking wound, we're pulling into the station.

I've set this up and I have nothing to knock it over with. The plan usually happens organically, naturally. It comes easy to me. Like Hannah and Caitlin, oh _God_, this is not the time for sex jokes when I've become _impotent_!

I can't quite believe it, even as I'm doing it, but I'm getting up and getting off the train. Johnson's a couple of steps behind me. Shaken, yes, but intact. An earthquake, yes, but firmly around the two-or-three on the Richter scale. Not good enough. Incomplete. Not bloody over yet, but it is. We're getting off this train and I'm never going to see him again.

And I'm not finished.

And I'm never going to see him again.

I wasn't bloody finished. Come back. I wasn't finished. Please. Come back.

Johnson's still those couple of steps behind me. I stop on the platform.

Deliverance stands before me. Deliverance is four feet tall with blonde pigtails and a pink anorak, holding on obediently to Mummy's hand. Dear, sweet, darling Deliverance, looking around for the ice cream van we can both hear and neither of us see. _The Entertainer_ in plinky-plonky little bells.

Oh, blessed Deliverance. I do not have to entirely act my joy as I rush up and sweep her into my arms.

"Evie! Hello, gorgeous, how are you?"

This is all I get out before Deliverance's mother tears her out of my arms and hustles away, glaring at me.

Johnson's still watching, so for a couple of steps, I follow. "Linda! Linda, _stop this_. For Christ's sake, I'm the girl's father!"

Linda has by now reached the security guard, so I back off, both hands up.

Doesn't matter anyway. When I turn, and have to walk away because otherwise Linda's going to have me arrested, and for trying to talk to my _own daughter_ no less, Johnson is still on the platform. Johnson should be long gone. The Financial Times slides, forgotten, out of his hand.

He stares at me as I walk back. I make momentary and entirely accidental eye contact. Johnson jumps back on the train, back to London and Shauna and into a life of denial and repression and never being happy again.

And yes, there's something. A little shimmer of a swelling. A warmth at the base of the breastbone. An awareness, perhaps, of warm south coast sun and the proximity of the boundless beauty of the ocean. Life can be beautiful, and I listen carefully, triangulating that ice cream van. I want a ninety-nine. Which is about thirty more than Johnson wants and a hell of a lot more than he's getting.

Oh yeah, I'm on fire.

And Captain Tuxedo? I wonder should I bring him an ice-cream… I wonder would he want sauce on it. Sherlock wouldn't. Sherlock would want chocolate bits. So Captain Tuxedo would probably want sauce. I'm going to get chocolate bits on mine.

Just because I like chocolate. No other reason. Just that.


	4. The Flower Girl

I get my 99 with chocolate bits, wander down to the seafront and have a think about where I'm going to find Captain Tuxedo.

See, I'm good at finding people. I need to find people all the time for work, all the people who are necessary to all the set up and all the back-up plans, and some of those are not easy people to find. But the thing is, they're all _known_ factors. Whereas this Captain Tuxedo, I don't even have a real name for him. Brighton. That was all I could get on him. And now here I am without a plan again.

Before I can think too hard about that, a girl barrels into me on a pair of roller skates. She tries to just shout her apology and take off again, but I'm not having that. I'm not putting up with that at all. I grab her back by the arm and it's all she can do to keep her wheels beneath her.

Ragged jeans. The skates aren't good skates, they're ancient plastic skates, and they don't fit her. She's got them strapped to her trainers, which are worn, have seen better days. There's a tidemark of dirt around the edges of her face and neck. Hair slightly greasy; washed in plain water without shampoo. She brings up her free arm, cradling a huge bouquet of flowers, each wrapped individually in newspaper. "Pound a head, mate?"

Homeless.

All those little factors, things I noted, they all add up in my head and I get the word 'homeless'. The skates got pulled out of a skip somewhere. Any washing she manages to do is probably in fecking rainwater or something. I add up existing facts and reach a new and logical conclusion.

Well, that's new and strange and not-entirely-comforting…

"Where did you get the flowers from?" She goes cagey, won't look straight at me. I wrap my fingers tighter round her arm and she winces, "Graveyard, mate, innit?"

I almost laugh at that one. Two weeks ago I would have given her money and my blessing for that one.

"…I'll give you twenty quid to do the Birdie dance."

She stops, does a quick count of the flowers on her arm. Apparently she's confident she can make her lunch money. "Nah, mate. Thanks all the same, though." Which is, at least, not the usual reaction. That would be the cautious look-over, some muttered reference to me clearly being some kind of pervert, and then skating away. So I loosen my grip and set her free to dance another day.

Then call her back.

"Oi!"

"What?"

"You're making me feel grubby just looking at you. Where's a decent hotel?"

"What's your budget?"

"Pretty much unlimited."

"…Do you still want me to do the Birdie dance?"

"No."

She pouts. "Metropolitan's the real plush one. Down that way on the other side of the road. Can't miss it. Look, I can do other kinds of dancing if you-" I give her the rest of my ice cream to shut her up before she finishes that.

It's surprising how much more comfortable I am with my feet on a white carpet. I feel better. I ask for a suite and one is provided.

I'm not staying here, by the way. Me, staying in Brighton, that's not going to happen, no fecking way. One marginally-less-than-mind-numbing flower girl does not redeem an entire town. No, I just really need a shower after touching her.

It's been a while since I was down at street level, see. Haven't dealt with… _everyday_ people in a while. Not directly anyway. I've done a lot from the comfort of the flat. But that there, before, I actually _touched_ that one. I don't think it was because she was an unwashed homeless at all, actually. I think she was just a human being and that's a bit weird. Been a while.

Even dear Little Molly Morgue didn't go far beyond squeezing a knee, and you can shower that off afterward. If they touch you it comes off but that, down there, that was me actually reaching out and…

Aw Jesus, my skin's gone all funny.

But the Metropolitan, thankfully, is exactly what the filthy little bitch said it was. It's a rarefied atmosphere, old air only ever breathed by people who can afford to, and that makes it just that little bit less used than normal places. It's easier to scrub off the outside with stuff that most people can't afford and which you can afford to get for free. Good, long scalding shower with a pumice stone very nearly does the trick. I can still feel that fleshy give under my fingers, but that'll fade. I close my fist around the handtowel hanging up and pretend it's the same feeling. It's not and I know that too well to ignore it, but it's close enough. I can nearly be tricked by that.

And I've decided. I decided in the shower. This wasn't the best plan. In fact, this was hardly a plan at all. This was a jaunt out after two weeks of no jaunts out. That's fair enough. I needed that.

But all this looking for people, all this detective work, this is for fools and angels, this is. This is a pile of shite that I just do not need in my life. What I'll do is I'll go home, I'll give Moran what I already have, and he can do it. Once I know who and what I'm looking for, _then_ I'll step in. It's a much more sensible way of doing things. I would have thought of that if I was in a better state of mind. Frankly, I blame Sherlock. He's left me a wreck and he doesn't even care enough to come out of hiding and say sorry. It's absolutely fucking disgusting. 'Side of angels' my sculpted fecking arse, the man's a torture master.

Might just have a quick snoozy first.

Don't. Take that fucking look off your face or I'll knock it off. I've been in bed for the better part of two weeks. As much activity as I've already been through today has taken it out of me, and that's perfectly natural and understandable and anybody who judges me for it is… is a _wanker_, alright?

Big queensize bed all done in white and gold, just lying there, perfectly flat, hospital corners, unruffled. Man was not built to resist. Always remember that. Temptation is just nature bound and gagged. I'm having a little snoozy and that's it.

I go headfirst, and from the foot of the bed, up under the sheets. The runner moves heavy over my back like a gentle massage. Worming upward and upward, my head finally eases out onto a pillow.

Not the comfiest pillow in the world, I must say. Bit disappointed. It's a bit… like, _crisp_ or something. It crackles a bit.

Oh, there's a sheet of paper on top of it. Right. Hotel letterhead, welcome from the staff probably that kind of thing. You'd think in a classy establishment like this…

Well, it's handwritten anyway. I suppose that's something.

Handwritten and personally addressed to 'Jim'.

I sit up. I don't want a little snoozy anymore. This is all a bit different and exciting.

'Jim,' is says, which is a bit familiar, but we'll forgive that for now. 'Ice cream was a good idea. Georgie speaks very highly of you, but you really should have paid her off.'

Georgie? Grubby homeless flower girl must have been called Georgie. Better hope I never get hold of her again too, I'll turn her greasy scalp into modern fucking art and Saatchi'll pay me millions for the ugly ginger thing.

'I understand what a wrench it must have been for you to come all the way down here, but you should stay. Call it a holiday. Relax. Or if you can't relax, you can look for me. I left a ticket on the dresser for you. Or not. Whatever.'

I'm not kidding. They've gone to the trouble of writing all that shite. You write things down so you can edit that stuff out, if you're the kind of ineloquent fuck that needs to. Gone to all that bother of sounding nervous and unsure, what's the point of that?

'Signed Tux.'

Fucking amateur. What kind of useless antagonist considers that an appropriate note to leave one's prey? Captain Tuxedo missed a couple of lessons when it came to villainous etiquette, I'll tell you that.

Of course there's etiquette. Every fool knows that. Just because I'm a bastard doesn't make me an animal, there are _rules_. There's a way to go about these things that keeps everything civil at least.

But when it comes to sneaking about, you must admit Tux is a pro. Either he knew I was getting this room before I did or he slipped in here while I was in the shower. Wrote a note, calmly placed it on my pillow, left a ticket of some kind on the dresser and left as though he'd never been here.

You have to give him credit for that.

It's all going just a little bit sexy again. I think I'll find out what that ticket's for…


	5. Oh Captain, My Captain

Fucking ticket.

I'm not going. It's as simple as that. That is just not a thing that is going to fecking happen, point blank. Tux, the fucker, whoever he is, is having a laugh, and he can go and fecking whistle for it.

Jesus, listen to me. You'd think I had something to be scared of. That's not what this is, it isn't fear, that's not me at all, not my style. It's just that I can think of no greater vision of hell than An Evening of Burlesque with Well Hung Harry and the After Midnight Girls. I know I said it was all getting very sexy, but this is taking the piss.

I should maybe reconsider calling Moran. He'd just _love_ that. Then again, I'm not sure just how much work I could expect him to get done. Just who in hell does this so-called Captain think he fucking is anyway? Summoning me to some tacky den of iniquity pretending it's classy because they wiggle the bra strap before they take it off. Of all the bloody nerve.

No, do you know what? The gent needs to be taught a bloody lesson. And I have about enough time to send back up to London for a suit.

I feel better in a suit. It's been a while since I had an opportunity to get properly scrubbed up, and I see now that this was a mistake. This lifts me again. Feel a bit more like myself. Even though I look like a corn-fed corpse recently dragged out of the earth, but the suit is still good and even I cannot detract from that. I send for a car and not a fucking minicab. It's self-indulgent, yes, but maybe that's for the best. Maybe I need to indulge. Holiday, nice hotel, _really_ good suit (did I _mention_ how good my suit is?), decent car, night out, top it off with a bit of wholesale psychological destruction upon a deserving victim and this, ladies and gentlemen, this is how I'm going to get myself back in the game. Sherlock can kiss my fucking Armani, he thinks I'm going to sit about moping over _him_.

I won and I haven't celebrated yet. This is a champagne night. It sounds like a fairly pretentious event I'm on my way to, there's bound to be champagne. And it really doesn't matter what the entertainment is. That's not what I'm going to be looking for.

It's funny, once you get up and shake yourself, how you can end up enjoying something which sounded like a pleasure trip to a puddle of piss at first.

But I must admit, there's a little moment of 'what have I done' at the doorway. It's just that it's everything I expected, which isn't ever a good thing. It's the red walls lit up so they pulse at you like a porn movie, all the gold and the curlicues. We're cool because we're old-fashioned. It's the men, who can't believe their luck that this is legitimate entertainment these days, all dressed up and ready to tent-pole their fucking formal trousers. It's the women, in their best dresses and their hair full of feathers and flowers like competing tribal brides, here to show off how sexually liberated they are by watching women tease men to maximum sexual puzzlement because this means that they are in control.

I try to count the social paradoxes in that and I stop at five because I get so bloody bored of it.

Don't get me started on the strippers either. They're not even strippers anyway, and you don't dare call them that either. They're a pack of overconfident rich girls and this is their idea of rebellion or they're struggling dance majors. There's just no _honesty_ to it. Come on, take it off, and fuck off. That's what they should do. That would help me respect them. And I wouldn't even mind _that_. You might have guessed, I'm not a great one for the truth, the whole and nothing but. But they're just so _obvious_ about it.

The waitresses. They're alright. They, at least, have the good grace to look sickened or pissed off, on the whole. There's one going about with that same big toothy permagrin on, but we'll just ignore her.

Yeah, let's keep an eye on the waitresses. Not least because their little stocking-and-suspender uniforms are modelled very closely on the classic male tuxedo.

My ticket entitles me, graciously, to a small private table on a dais in the back corner. Blocked off at the sides. I can see everything and nobody's looking at me. The whole floor, every player, spread out beneath me, and the stage dead ahead. 'Come and look for me,' the note said. And there it all is, like _Where's_ fucking _Wally_. Tux thinks he's hiding down there. Wandering around under my nose. In plain sight. The Purloined Letter Writer.

Meanwhile, on the stage, Well Hung Harry is dressed as a ringmaster (not that any of those sexually-liberated women in the audience are noticing the obvious metaphor) and is getting things started. Big booming voice, roll up, roll up. Introduces the live band, one at a time. Introduces a singer, pretending not to notice she hasn't appeared yet. Goes on for almost a full minute about the sultry siren, the devil with the angel's voice, so on, so forth, before he then pretends to realize. Calls out for her by 'the only name man has ever given her' (_man_, by the way, oh great post-feminist masses), the _Darling Wreck_. Which is a momentary distraction I'll admit, but he's going to address her as Mademoiselle from here on out, so I won't need to worry about that.

Claps his hands and as if by magic, in a cloud of black glitter, she appears perched on the piano.

It's going to be one of _those_ shows, I think…

There's a gentleman sitting near the bar. Another one who sits alone. Doesn't need a pack of mates about, isn't pretending that this is anymore than a fucking strip show. An aged gentleman, it must be said, in an old Navy jacket with his brass buttons buffed up to mirrors. Nothing much remarkable, old man, clinging to the time in his life when he was best or most important. But he's wearing his hat and all. A shining, well-kept hat with the anchor on the front of it.

Which is far too obvious to even consider.

But then, Wally always did wear that fucking awful bobble hat. And this Aged Captain could have had help, I suppose, somebody to do the creeping and sneaking. Could have had Georgie Roller-skates too, if he's showing up to this kind of establishment by himself. You know what that kind of thing says about a man.

I don't count. I was asked to come.

So there's him to keep an eye on, and another couple of candidates, and the waitresses. All in all it's quite good fun, actually. Just ignore all the glitter and feathers and, oh, fuck, _Jesus_, the _skin_ flying around on that stage and keep an eye on the real, proper human drama. It's not so bad when you've got something to watch for. Like, if somebody told me that Scar from _The Lion King_ was hidden somewhere in the background of every episode of Eastenders for the last month, I'd probably go and find him.

Not that I have that much respect for Captain Tuxedo.

Note to self: in any comparable metaphorical situation, just make sure and kill Simba. It all works out so well if those fucking hyenas just do their fucking job. 'Course, what do you expect when you get Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin in to do the job? At least I have Sebastian. Fair enough, he's a hopeless bastard, but he could finish off a fucking lion cub. He used to hunt tigers, you know. Lion cub would be _no_ bloody problem.

…But I digress.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Not a bad night all in all. Nice bit of studying to do, and, all credit to the Mademoiselle, the music's not awful. She came through from Just An Old Fashioned Girl to Paradise Circus without jarring at all.

The only time I get distracted is when the whole arch, forcedly-sexy tone goes out of her voice and something sounds heartfelt.

_Say anything, but don't say goodbye_.

_Brown Eyes Blue_, Crystal Gayle originally, far superior cover by Alison Statton, later murdered by Dana Winner. Ultimately translated into French and thereby laid to rest forever as anything you'd ever want to listen to. Not that I know an awful lot about 70s country-pop music or anything, but it's not a bad song, altogether. It's better when somebody means it.

And when they're looking at _you_ while they mean it…

_I didn't mean to treat you bad, didn't know just what I had_

And don't it make her brown eyes blue.

Well, no, in fact. And she can't really properly mean it all now, can she, because she doesn't have brown eyes. She has grey eyes. So that's all gone out the window and totally ridiculous now. Can't believe I nearly fell for that.

_Wait_, fuck, _I_ have brown eyes.

What the hell, why is she looking at me, with the big grey eyes, and singing about brown eyes and I have brown eyes, what kind of a fucking point is she trying to make? What does she know about what makes my brown eyes fucking blue, the nasty little bitch? And just when I was starting to feel better. I'm going to tear the pointy, noble features off her porcelain painted face. I'll wait in her dressing room, and when she walks in I'll stop ranting and get back to watching the audience, yes, that's what I'll do. That's the sane, rational thing to do. And this one night, this one occasion, as if to ease me back into it, the sane, rational thing is not the boring one.

And it's a good thing I turn back when I do.

The Captain, the older gentleman in his Navy jacket, is flirting with the one waitress I had resolved not to be arsed with. The permagrinning one who, now that I'm looking at her anyway, actually does have quite nice legs. And part of what that clever old salt does is whip off his hat and put it on her, pulling it down over her eyes. And she laughs, gives him his drink, and walks off still wearing it.

Sold, to the brown eyed man at the back in the really nice suit.

The Captain and the Tuxedo. The man of means and the woman without arthritis, perfect combo. I stand up and make my way down to his table. Seat myself. Say hello. Hear it back. And I glow, just a little bit, when he sounds surprised. Thought I wouldn't get him, the arrogant bastard, well, that's his fault. Just couldn't resist, could he? Couldn't help but mess about with his little blonde piece. _Nice_ legs on it, though, if you're into that kind of thing. I'll give him that.

But he still looks surprised. He probably should have relaxed into it by now.

"She'll…" he stammers. Old codger of a voice, wheezy, a hundred years of cheap army cigarettes and gunsmoke, one foot in the grave and let's face it, this fella can't get the other six feet over his head to keep it out. "She'll bring it back before the end, dear boy."

"…You have no idea who I am, do you?"

"Should I? The memory's not what it used to be, y'know."

"Oh, for crying out loud… Listen, mate, sorry, drinks are on me, alright? Knock yourself out. Now where is the chicken-legged bitch?"

At the door, actually, when I look around. One last glance over her shoulder to check I'm not following.

She can fucking hope.

Off she goes in her army hat, stealing a coat from the cloakroom and wrapping it over her stripper tux. This is ridiculous. _This_ is Captain Tuxedo. This dragged me down here and messed me about all day and tried to serve me champagne before I asked if she couldn't send over her mate with the dark hair who reminded me of my long-lost white-skin shoes. She's going to bloody suffer, this one, I'm going to make sure of it. I can't think of anything because I'm running and she's wearing four-inch heels and still outrunning me. I am, understandably, distraught.

I've just been a little bit out of action for a while. That's all it is. And she's _really_ fast, I'm not even kidding. Must be used to those shoes. She must do laps in Manolos, that's all I'm saying.

But she runs into a gaggle of drag queens and takes an unexpected turn to avoid them, turning without looking onto a street that will prove to be her one true nemesis.

Cobblestones.

I have her in moments. "Gotcha, Tux."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, here, take it." And she puts the hat into my hands. Starts taking the coat off. "Take it back. Don't worry about it, I'll give her back the money, it doesn't matter."

Oh, no. No, this hasn't happened.

This is _my_ thing. This is what _I_ do. This is appearing out of taxi windows and getting your best mate when you make him charge off to protect him, this is _my – fucking – thing_.

"…Excuse me?"

"I'll give her back the money, it doesn't matter, you can take the hat back, only don't arrest me, mister, please."

Fucking Captain Tuxedo. _Fucking_ Captain _bastard_ Tuxedo. Captain _oh Christ, Mr Moriarty, look at my deathwish while I wave it in your face_ Tuxedo paid this dear little waitress with the nice legs to steal a hat and take off. Probably laughing his arse off, well, be careful what you fucking wish for, son, I'll make you wear it like a hat all the way back to London.

He said I was a _cop_.

The _magnificent_ fucking _bastard_.

"Where is he?" I ask her, and I shake her by the shoulders and ask hard so she knows that I mean it. "The one who paid you, where is he?"

Stupid vapid little bitch goes blank, all the presence and intelligence there might have been just draining out of her face. She looks at me like _I'm_ the mad one. "…Back at the club but-"

I drop her and take off.

"Mister, _wait_! You don't-"

Want to listen to a petty lying thief. No, love, well observed, have a fucking biscuit.

I make my way back. Not running. Not because I'm out of breath, just because I'm not in that much of a hurry. Wouldn't give him the satisfaction of it. But I arrive at the door again, cap in hand, as it were.

And the Mademoiselle du Darling Wreck, the siren, is looking at me again. Big grey eyes, luring, recrossing her legs in the midst of her big layered skirts. Sings;

_We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when_.

Which sounds a bit odd when she's supposed to be in between tracks.

And I look at the hat in my hand and hold it up, pointing, mouth, '_You_?'

She raises one hand in a distinctly British salute. The other takes up a great handful of those skirts. She turns off the edge of the piano, and vanishes. A moment later, the empty dress falls to the stage.

And it's not part of the show. Well Hung Harry is freaking the fuck out. Doesn't do a good enough job of covering it up, and the audience notices. No kind of showman at all. In minutes, the place is chaos which is, at least, a little bit interesting. I wait until things have well and truly crumbled and then I approach Bragging Harry. "What seems to be the problem, then?"

"And who are you?" he balks, panicked. He's from Liverpool, when he's not from a 1930s circus out of a film.

"Well, when it's _not_ my night off I'm a Detective Inspector."


	6. Chicken

As Detective Inspector Greg Anderson (give me a break, I was on the spot), I deduce that the young lady calling herself the Darling Wreck disappeared into the rigging above the stage. Must have slid right out of her dress and let that fall. Big sparkly flutter like that, nobody would have seen a pair of white feet pulling up amongst the lights. That's my deduction. As well as that, Well Hung Harry told me that's where she comes down from at the top of the show. Or used to. If I find her, I'm to tell her she's fired.

That'll be a bit redundant considering I'll have my hands around her throat. Far be it from me, though, not to pass the message on.

But I don't know how she could have gotten down and away in the chaos that followed her little stunt. There's nowhere to go from up there except back down onto the stage. It's only a very small venue. With all eyes watching for her, with the band looking right up where her skirt had already fallen down on top of them, where the hell did she go?

I ask Well Hung Harry if there's a ladder about. I need to get up there. And he has somebody run and fetch him one. It's quite fun being a policeman, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

…Oh, children's television was wrong. Children's television was a mistake.

While I'm waiting for the ladder, I take a moment to imagine how it would have felt to arrest Sherlock Holmes all by myself. With handcuffs and everything. And a _truncheon_, and of _course_ he'd resist, because he'd recognize me, and I'd _whack_ him round the back of the head with the truncheon and it would be okay because it would be self-defence. I'd bring him in and the sergeant would congratulate me on finding such a terrible criminal and bringing him to justice and I'd say, "Just doing my duty, Sarge," and every day, every quick, vicious shanking in the lunch line, every proper prison shower, every defenceless bunk bed sleep, he'd have been thinking those words, _why_ oh _why_ didn't I think of 'policeman' sooner?

Well Hung Harry pokes me. Apparently the ladder arrived some moments ago.

I put it by the piano and climb up to where she left her hook and winch behind. Harry explains to me that the dress is the baffling thing, because the dress had her harness for the trick built into it. That's not really all that baffling, though, that just means she sewed a couple of D-hooks into her bra straps this morning.

I deduce that.

How the hell do I…?

Never mind. Anyway, I'm not really listening to Harry anymore.

Up here, on the three inch steel beam, is a little chalk arrow. Pointing upstage at the black satin set dressing.

And now I know why I was called to a burlesque show. She's a fucking pricktease, of high-fucking-order.

I mean, seriously. Leaving signs and trails and cryptic clues? It's just so… old-fashioned or something. No class to it. Yeah, it's proper old school villainy but, well, that's exactly the problem. She's going to tie a kitten to some railway tracks next.

Now there's an idea. Wish I'd thought of that before. Tie a kitten to some railway tracks, have a little chat with Holmes. Let me run off or the cat dies. And of course, he'd stay talking to me, but when the train went by he'd see the TV cameras that got the whole thing. Hard to be beloved and wonderful when you're letting kittens get splattered all over the gravel and girders now, isn't it?

So I haul myself up, with no difficulty whatever because I'm still my svelte usual self, and follow the chalk arrow to the back of the stage. And yes, there's a little cavity there. Dark little space between the black satin and the brick wall, and a rope hanging down into it. Not a stage rope, a climber's rope, red and purple.

Just enough space for a skinny bitch free of her big fluffy dress to slide down.

On the floor at the bottom, just a little white glow in the dark, another fecking arrow. I've got my directions; exit stage left.

_Jesus_, was this how he lived? Always a step behind, always following, always being told where he had to go. _Jesus_, the boring bastard, how did he stick it?

I don't shimmy down the rope, I'm not that much of a sheep. I go back to my ladder and climb down. I tell Well Hung Harry I might have found something and not to follow me in case he walks on the evidence, i.e. smudges my arrows.

But my God, all I have to do is go where they point.

Arrows. Everywhere. Huge big bloody arrows chalked on the walls while everybody was out front wondering if they were going to finish the show without a singer. They point, being arrows and arrows being things of a pointing nature, and I just _go_. This… This is no kind of a life for a grown man to live. The Hardy Boys. The Hardy Boys follow arrows.

That's quite good, actually. When I saw them together that time at court I should have called them the Hardy Boys. That would have been funny. The Sun would have printed that and noted my utter disdain for them.

Well, no, it's The Sun. They would have said, 'Jim Moriarty clearly didn't give a toss', or something of similar calibre, but it's the thought that counts.

No, my point is, no grown man should be following arrows. He should be making his own. And something swells up huge in my chest, something which, in another life, in another person, might have been pity. Might have been a lump in the throat, which I'm not swallowing, I promise. My throat's just dry. From all this running about. Following these fucking arrows.

Following them all around the backstage, and occasionally in tease-y little circles around the insides of dressing rooms and do you know where they end?

Can you guess?

Let me give you a clue; the arrows are our little escape artist's stage directions.

Exit. Stage Door.

She's drawn a great big smiley face on it too, with her chalk. I open it and there's another arrow on the step, directing me into the alley. Thanks, love. I never would have gotten down that step without your gentle guidance.

When they find her, her eyes and mouth will be sewn shut, and a smiley face painted over them, in blood.

Darling, you're going to be a Wreck when I'm done with you.

Oh, that's quite good. I _have_ to remember that one. That can't be one of those retrospective things like I keep thinking about Sherlock.

But hey. Why do they have to be retrospective? He's coming back. I'm just waiting for him to get his arse in gear. I can still do all those things. I can be P.C. Plod and get a quote in The Sun saying I couldn't give a toss. I could tell him to his face that following everybody else's arrows is no bloody way for a real, proper person to live their life.

I'll have had time, by then, to phrase it better.

This is quite nice, you know. Having this back. I mean, yes, I am _critically_ pissed off at Miss Wreck. I'm going to kill her with several different sizes of hammer. I think I'll work my way down. For instance, I'll start by shattering things with a sledgehammer and then I'll gradually go down to very, very painful detail work. But that's all in the future. Here in the present, I'm thinking. Which I haven't been doing an awful lot of during my recuperation from my demise. I'm thinking about things that I can use, that'll be fun, that'll amuse me. I'm thinking of all the stuff that usually keeps me so ahead of the game, keeps me from feeling like _crap_ and I did, y'know. This morning, in bed, when Moran called, I felt like shite.

I don't feel like shite anymore. Getting my appetite back.

In more ways than one. I can smell chips.

Cornflakes have no distinctive scent, but chips do. Vinegar does. Chips and vinegar and salt and red sauce on the side. Chips have a smell. I can smell chips. Want chips. Want chips after everything, after weeks of withdrawal, of extreme and accidental detox (only with alcohol instead of water and, like, fucking ginseng or whatever) I want fucking chips.

I don't follow arrows, alright?

I'm a man. I follow things that I want. I follow my nose and there it is.

Too late in the day to be full of kids, too early in the night to be full of drunks. A big, long chip-shop with neon round the windows, looking fresh and clean inside, with tables and booths and you can tell it used to pretend to be an American diner, until it stopped being such a wanker and just settled down to being a really nice seaside chip-shop.

Chip-shop. Chips. No more fucking deductions, fuck's sake, I couldn't care less, I want chips.

Walking along by those blue and pink lined windows, I am almost perfectly focussed. Almost entirely blinkered by the need for chips. And salt and vinegar and red sauce.

Almost.

Not so blinkered that I miss it.

At my feet on the ground. Chalked. Smiley face.

In alignment with it, in a booth by the window, filling her face with fried chicken, the Darling Wreck. The big blonde curls must have been a wig, and that's gone now. That's been hanging out of a bin somewhere and I was supposed to notice it. You can tell she was wearing a wig from the way the ginger hair underneath is scraped back and piled on the crown of her head, stuck full of pins with no real care for how it looks.

And she's wearing a skintight black bodysuit that must have been under the dress, but with glittering black heels on that wrap up her calves. It's summer, but we're still on the fucking British coast.

I've been watching her for a while before she notices. At which she looks up, and her face lights up like I'm a good friend she hasn't seen in a while and who isn't trying to add up in his head how long he can keep her alive and in pain before she finally succumbs to the Last Caress, and waves me in to join her. From outside to her booth takes about forty-five seconds. Forty-five seconds to compose myself. To relax. To remind myself that this is a public place and before I do anything I'll have to get her away from here.

There's a case already, isn't there, where they found a body in a suitcase at Brighton Station? Something like that?

I could go historical. Make up some metaphorical message for Sherlock to figure out when he gets oh, for fuck's sake, I have to stop thinking about him. Getting ridiculous now, you'd think we'd been brothers or something…

"Olly-olly-oxen-free," I say, by way of introduction.

She hears the undertone. I can tell that much. But she's still smiling. There's something awfully brave about her. Not stupid, because I know she heard me, but brave. She looks up, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. "Oh, I know, I'm sorry. But I had to get away too, you know."

That apology wasn't even an apology. I'm going to do the hammer thing and then the suitcase thing.

And yet, I am sitting down.

Don't ask me to _explain_ it. What are you, _thick_? Why should I _explain_ why I'm sitting down despite my better judgement? Why should I _explain_ myself at all? I'm a man, remember? No, if you can't figure it out for yourself, you can go and whistle for it, I'm afraid.

Yeah, I have absolutely no idea.

"Do you think I have _time_ for this bollocks?"

She shrugs, picks up another drumstick and bites into it. With her other hand, she is splitting the chips on the paper in front of her into two lots, stripping another straw from the plastic. "Got you out of bed, didn't it?"

"Excuse me? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"You tell me," she says. Grins. Fucking tease. "And for Christ's sake, eat something would you? I mean, you _look_ dead, for sure."

Oh. The split in the chips. The second straw. She takes the last two pieces of chicken out of the box and puts them on the paper at my side. Now this is wrong. When one is in negotiations with a pain in one's derriere, one does not partake of chicken and chips with it. That's rule number one. Well, no, because that would be a stupid rule number one, but whatever the number it's just as important. But has tea or plays chess or drinks a fine wine, for fuck's sake. Not chicken and chips and a…

"Is this diet?"  
>"Of course."<p>

…and a Diet Coke, this is not the way of things.

But fuck it, I just want that big greasy lump of chicken between my teeth with its however-many-herbs-and-spices and yeah, yeah, fuck it, I'll eat with her.

I don't sound half so intimidating with a mouthful of chips. "So what were you saying about who you are?"

"I said," she says back through chicken, "you tell me."

"I don't think you understand-" I stop to stifle a hiccup against my fist. Been a while since I ate like this, "Excuse me – just the kind of company you're in, my dear."

Her mouth is too full to answer, but by her pointing, the way she nods, she seems to think she does.

"Alright," I tell her, "You're a godawful cabaret singer with a stupid name."

"I'm not godawful. You were transfixed."

"I notice you don't defend the name."

She hangs her head, crunches the soft bone from the top of the drumstick between her teeth. "You're so thick."

"Excuse me?" I wonder has anybody ever died from having a spork shoved down their gullet.

"I mean, it's okay. I wouldn't get it either. I'm not good at figuring things out afterwards. I just thought if it was so obviously supposed to mean something then you'd… Never mind, it's alright."

"No, hold on a minute!" She stops, waiting, holding on a minute. Somewhere in the middle of it, she offers me ketchup. "Just a bit, love, on the side. If it's so bloody meaningful, I'll get it!"

"It's no big deal – is that enough?"

"Grand, yeah."

"- It was just a stupid joke. It doesn't even really _mean_ anything. I just tried to make the inconsistency really… _obvious_, so-"

"Well if it's so fucking obvious then I'll get it then."

"Alright. Take as long as you want."

She takes one of the kiddies placemats from the holder on the table and does the maze with a broken green crayon while I think. What's so glaringly wrong with the Mademoiselle, with the Darling Wreck? Aside from _everything_ about it, clearly. I can get this. I _do_ this. I'm _good_ at names. Richard Brooke was a fucking masterpiece of taunting alias-ness. Way better than la Mademoiselle the Darling Wreck, which is just wrong on so many levels. She fucked up. Let's just admit it here and now, there's no point in saying I missed anything, because none of it makes any sense to start with.

"Mademoiselle," I say, slowly.

It doesn't feel nice, to be figuring something out, rather than setting it in place.

No, I'm not joking. It really doesn't. It feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

No, I don't like it.

I don't.

You know what would take that look off your face? A hammer.

"Why is the Darling Wreck in English and Mademoiselle is French?"

She grins, claps her hands like a fucking seal. Clearly I've cracked a puzzle very dear to her heart. But as I put it together, as I follow my findings through to their logical conclusion (oh God, oh, Christ, don't ever so much as think that sentence again), that's when I remember that I came in here very annoyed with her.

That's when I dive across the table to check out that theory about the spork

"Oh, you think that's funny? Fucking bitch, I'll tell you a joke! Shite singer and a psychopath go into a chip-shop. Only one of them leaves!"


	7. The Sirens

Now, come with me, if you will, on a little linguistic journey. Just ignore, for a brief moment, the fact that I'm strangling an bizarrely dressed young lady in a very public place with every intention of murder, and let's do a bit of Franglais.

Mademoiselle Darling Wreck.

French, English, English.

The obvious tipping point then, is at that first comma there. Between the French and the English. So let's tip it, then. It shall be the seesaw of our translatory playground

English, French, French.

Miss.

Cher.

Loque.

And that, your honour, is why I had to murder her on the floor of a Southern Fried Chicken in Brighton. No jury in the world would convict me, your honour, under that kind of provocation. Plead 'guilty', your honour? I plead fucking heroism, sir! Wiping scum like this off the face of the _and_ a big cheffy type in greasy whites now has me by the back of the collar. That's alright, though, he can lift me on up, I'm taking the little bitch with me.

But between him pulling and her clawing at my hands, she drops back onto her hooker-heels in no time.

And sticks out one flat, 'stop' hand to the big cheffy type and says, "Easy, mate, he's only messing about." Staring at me, meaningful eye-contact, "Aren't you, Joe?"

"_No_!"

So she forces a laugh, apologizes over my shoulder to the cheffy type, then, "Joe, seriously, the man's not joking."

Making _my_ apologies, getting _me_ out of trouble and what for? If she's praying for mercy she can fuck right off. The angels have no jurisdiction here, _cher_, I made fucking well sure of that.

Of course, she's a _teeny_ bit right. If I'm going to kill her I should at least do it somewhere out of the way. Give me a break; I haven't done this with my own hands in a long time. I've got Moran. Fuck, it's like having a dog and barking yourself.

And to cut a long story short, the little bitch gets her way. And as part of the 'just messing about' cover story, I actually leave that fetid little dive with my arm round her shoulders. Once we're round the corner I throw her off, straighten my suit. And she does the stupidest thing. I swear to you, ladies and gentlemen, dear and constant reader, she giggles. Giggles, rubbing the great, blossoming bruises on her throat and says, "Yeah, alright. The name was a stupid idea then."

"Keep talking while I choose the best way to kill you."

"Acid."  
>"See <em>just<em> because you said that, we're not doing acid."

"Really? Because I have a guy for that."

"Oh, fuck off." She sighs, tosses her head, like I've just done something to massively let her down. _Me_. Irritating _her_. And since she clearly has no fear of death, and I know of nothing that I can take away from her, what can I threaten her with? What can I say except 'What?'? Which, I realize, gives the distinct impression that I care, but what am I left with? Questions. Everywhere, questions. And I'm not the one with the answers, I'm the one doing the asking. And I swear to you, hand on that hard-working lump of muscle under my left set of ribs, the last time this happened was _long_ before the last time I properly murdered somebody. "What the hell is your problem!"

"It's not mine, it's _yours_. This is exactly why we're here. Because of 'Fuck off', because of 'What's your problem?', because of you fucking torturing televisions, can I have your jacket?"

"What? No!"

"C'mon, I'm freezing."

"It's my good Armani."

"Well, then can we go wherever you left your parka, because-"

"How do you know about my parka?" She actually stops. Puts one of her grubby, chickeny hands on my sleeve and turns me. Lips parted, wide-eyed, the parody of disbelief. I don't even ask her what she's staring at. That's exactly what she wants. When I don't, she reaches up behind and drags her hair down out of the topknot, stands with a slight slouch, but her chin tipped up, pouting her lips that little bit extra. "Fuck me, Georgie the Flower Girl."

"No, thanks, I'm too stuffed from eating."

A moment of mirthless silence.

"That's an old joke," I tell her.

"I know."

"I… That's actually a bit beneath you, that joke."

"I know. Here's a better one, though. I was on your train and all."

Fuck me, she was and all. She was a medical student with best frenemies and a fuck-buddy she wanted more from and a dealer called fecking _Cone_, and I decided against her for utter destruction. Favoured the stockbroker, which was, in retrospect, really quite clever of me. His story was real. Ginger here would only have frustrated me. She wouldn't have been _right_, wouldn't have crumbled, because none of it would have been real. I would have lost heart, gone home to my cornflakes and my Jeremy Kyle.

Of course I'd have had to watch it on the computer, since the tellies are all fucked…

Oh, and _five minutes later_, Jim Moriarty gets the fecking joke.

"Because of me torturing televisions?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ, the moment that _defined_ the last bleeding straw…"

She's been in my flat. _Knows_ me and I never knew she existed. Because I wasn't _looking_ for her, was I? Who was supposed to take any interest in me? Who was supposed to _know who I was_ except for His Majesty? And somehow I don't think he sent her. Because, in spite of everything, and yes, I realize my instincts have been a little bit off lately and that there is, therefore, no reason why I can't just maybe be wrong again but-

I don't think she's messing me about.

I get nothing off her but blunt, upfront bitch-honesty.

And the last time _that_ happened was long, _long_ before the last time I was the Question Man. People aren't like that, y'see. They're just not. And anybody who tells you they're an honest, upfront person is the worst of the lot. Me, I just say I'm a bastard and have it over with. Look, here it comes; I, James Gordon Moriarty, am a bastard. There it is, stated for the world to see and I'll stand by it. But the problem with that is, and I don't know if you've maybe noticed this yourself yet, but I'm not like normal people. That's another thing I've come to terms with.

No, normal people lie and they cheat and they play games and even when they don't think they're doing it, they still have all these little rules and fences that control the way they act. People are always, _always_ gauging things, how this will work, who's not going to like this, how people will react to that… Being a normal person must be a full-time job. No wonder you shower of bastards never get anything done, you're too busy keeping up with yourselves, chasing your bloody tails around your little semi-traditional-Facebook-blogger mazes, _fuck_, it'd break your heart if you had one.

She takes my long silence for confusion and says, "Well, who did you think was feeding your cat?"

"I do _not_ have a cat."

"I have changed a litter tray twice since you went into your hermitry."

"Oh. Really?"

"And the Eternal Bushmills Bottle? Gift from a leprechaun, was it? And all the cornflakes? Here's a massive big hint, Mr Moriarty, you put milk on your cornflakes. Milk goes off. And you haven't bought milk since the last time you left your flat, which was the morning of St Bart's, so-"

The impulse to scream 'Who the fuck are you?' right in her blank, honest little face, right before tearing it off with shingle, sea water and good old fashioned elbow grease somehow transmutes into a low, stupid-sounding echo, "What's your name?"

"Whatever you want. Is that _really_ the big question right now? Ask one more, Jim. Then we'll start getting you back to what you know, I promise."

"…Why are you doing this?"

"Because what were you going to look like if he came back tomorrow? Sad, lonely little man looking like death in his flat because they Stopped All The Clocks. I couldn't stand and watch it anymore, you were starting to sicken me."

You've probably seen _It's A Wonderful Life_. There's been some godawful Christmas you were too stuffed or pissed or both to be arsed changing the channel, and you've seen _It's A Wonderful Life._

This, my friends, oh, my dear, wonderful friends out there, all you _good good_ people, all you idiots, all you One-Born-Every-Minutes, you Can-You-Fix-It-For-Mes, you fucking shitpile of wasters, fodder for my cannons, grist for my mill, all you glorious, beautiful fucking people, this is my Jimmy Stewart moment.

Every time a bell rings, you can finish that sentence for yourself.

But as I think it a police car sails by, sirens wailing. Such glorious noise. They used to just have little swinging bells on the top, back in the old days. Every time a bell rings…

She grins, the way she did when I guessed at Darling Wreck, like some thrilled child, "Are you still going to kill me?" Twisted child. Satan child. She is that which fell off my left shoulder all those weeks ago. She has not abandoned me, through it all.

"Oh, God yes," I tell her. "But not on the floor of a chippy, I promise you that. I'll find something elaborate and unsolvable for you. You'll live forever in the annals of crime history. They'll puzzle over you for years. Sherlock himself will never solve you. You'll be eternal, you wonderful bloody bitch, that much I promise you. You fancied acid, didn't you?"

"Only so I could do the dealer joke."

"No acid then."  
>"Always thought drowning would be alright."<p>

"Oh, then drown you shall, you demon wonder from hell, drown you shall. But not tonight."


	8. Catnap

She steals the bed at the Metropolitan, grubbying up the pristine sheets. It's alright, though, I don't need it. I'm not sleeping. Never do when I have something on. It's just lost time and then you have to go through the whole slow, groggy process of waking up, and you're never at your best when you sleep, you know. Top tip for all of you. Once you give up sleeping you become so much more efficient.

Anyway, I've done enough sleeping.

We're only even here because there were no more trains until morning. We're going back to London, for her to show me where she lives, or else I'm going to strangle her with her own hair and probably scalp her in the process.

She liked that one. She said it was an improvement from 'Fuck off' certainly. Not that I care what she thinks.

I'm calling her Odbody, by the way, after the angel from _It's A Wonderful Life_. Not that I think of her as an angel, just that I can shorten it to Odd, which she hates. Says she doesn't, but it's plain that she hates it. It's the least I can do, when she's dragged me off on this wild goose chase all day.

I asked her who she was, really, and she told me she'd tell me later.

"No," says I, "You'll tell me now."

"Look," says she, and right to my face, "You'll find out soon enough. Now we can stop and argue about this and not even pretend to be friends, or we can leave it for now, hm?"

Absolutely _no_ fear of death. She's a miracle of human nature. And I have never hated anybody so much in all my born days. I think I might string her up in a basement and, over the course of many months, remove the skin from her flesh in little strips.

See, the difference between her and Sherlock, aside from, y'know, _everything_, is the fact that she has no _manners_. Odd just went on ahead. Sherlock was there and ready and worthy, but he waited. The first move was mine. He was a gent about it. I mean, I've heard of ladies first, of course I have, but _that_, over there, Gingerlocks sleeping in my bed, that's just uncouth. Manipulating _me_. Breaking into _my_ flat. Dragging me out of my mourning and grief and bed for a pointless little jaunt down the coast. And to do it from the shadows like she did! It's not fucking cricket. You don't do that. If you're going to toy with the whole world, well, that's fine. Then you sit back in the shadows. Puppetmastery is fine when you're dealing with the bigger picture. But when one enters single combat, one must announce oneself. That's the way of things.

It's internet poker all over again.

Can I tell you a secret?

I have lost more money at internet poker than the News of the World have paid out in hacking settlements. I win it all back in real life, sit down, people-in-the-room games, no problem, but all I do is lose it again on the internet. What good is poker if you can't get a look at the bastard?

All I'm saying is, no wonder she got so far. I mean, if I hadn't gone to the pool that night, that bastard would have died, properly I mean, never knowing a fucking shite more than my name. I'm confident of that. When you don't reveal yourself, you're just not playing a fair game.

First I check her breathing, to make sure she's properly asleep and not just being a sly, cocky little bitch again. Then I get my phone out and dial for Moran.

He answers on the thirteenth ring, yawning, "Whazzamatr?"

"With me, Seb, nothing. Not very nice, though, is it?"

"Fuck off, Jim, I called you at after midday."

"It was still a safe bet I'd be asleep, you bastard."

"Is that all you called for? Can I hang up now?"

"Have you been to the flat? Y'know, since… everything."

"Don't you think you'd know?"

"Not necessarily. C'mon, Sebastian, yes or no?"

"'Course I haven't."

"Mm-hm. So when?"

"…Once. 'Bout a week ago."

"Notice anything strange?"

"You mean aside from the Air Supply album being on repeat and somebody perpetually groaning the lyrics to 'Can't Live' behind a closed door, at three in the afternoon?"

"…Aside from that."

"No. I left beans and bread, dumped the last loaf since it had gone blue, scratched Sherly behind the ears and left."

"Wait, Sherly was there?"

"'Course she was, where else would she be?"

Rotterdam or anywhere. I put Sherly out the window the evening of St Barts and told her to just go. Couldn't look at her anymore. Not her fault, of course, mine entirely. We all knew the day would come when that name wasn't going to work for us anymore, when it was going to hurt. But nonetheless, we couldn't both stay in the flat, so I opened the window, put her on the balcony and told her just to go. Just make her own way and go. Find herself some sweet old dear where the floors were linoleumed with bacon and…

Oh, sorry, Sherly's the cat, by the way. Don't know if I'd made that clear, exactly.

Point is, she shouldn't have been there.

"If she let you scratch her, she must have been eating. Did you feed her?"

"No. I presumed you'd put the food out before you went to Pine-Along With Harry Nilsson."

"…Fuck off, Moran." I hang up.

So Odd's story checks out. She let the cat back in, took care of her. Sebastian said bread and beans, not milk. Why would he? Why would he suspect my borderline dependency on cornflakes, and I drink my coffee black. And Moran, for all his tiger-hunting, bastard front, would never provide nightly alcohol to a man who obviously wasn't coping. Wouldn't stage an intervention either, wouldn't storm in and take it away, but he wouldn't bring any more.

Fucking hell, I've got a housekeeper.

That I never paid for.

Note to self, check the valuables when we get back.

Sleepily, from the bed, "I only ever used the Whiskas, Mr Moriarty. There wasn't any bacon. Bacon's for treats and special occasions." That would be almost sweet, if there had ever been anybody I wanted to destroy more.

What _annoys_ me is the fact that I'm not doing anything about it. What I should do, what I _know_ I should do, is kill her now, and leave her somewhere very public in so horrible a state that she becomes a national concern. I'm talking real Jeremy Paxman, Panorama special stuff here. Then there's massive pressure on everybody up to MI5 to find out what happened to her, and in the process they'll find out all about her for me. That's how I get my information and I work backwards from there to find out everything she could ever have told me anyway. Easy peasy. Simple pimple.

And please, oh Lord please, do not think I'm out of fucking ideas on how to do it, my friends. I've got loads of those.

_And fecking yet_.

All I do is sit by the bed, while she slips back down into half-sleep, and say, "How do you know about bacon?"

Mumbling, barely there, "Inductive reasoning."

For the second time tonight, it's half a second before I have my hands around her throat and drag her up to sitting, making the shocked gasps and gulps of one waking up out of a nightmare. Or into one.

"Fucking say that again!"

"What? Oh… yeah, inductive reasoning. There were bacon rinds in the bowl from when you threw her out, but barely any in the fridge, and loads of cat food in the cupboards, so," and she shrugs, "Inductive reasoning."

"And who the fuck taught a vicious little scrap like you about inductive reasoning?"

"Oh," she smiles, and finally sees where I'm going with this. She brings up her hands and eases them around mine, loosening my grip on her throat, "Sorry, that was getting a bit sore with the bruises from earlier. Yeah, yeah… inductive and deductive reasoning, all came from Sherlock." And one more time, she says it would a hint of irony, not teasing, not pretending. Just telling me the answer to my question. Just being, like… _honest._ Yawning again, "Listen, Mr Moriarty, if I promise you it's not what it sounds like and all will become clear in London, can I go back to sleep now? Please?"

I put her down, tell her she should call me Jim, and leave the room.


	9. The Train, Again

The next morning, and the train back to London. It's much like the train _away_ from London, except this time I had to pay for two tickets, and there's a girl sitting opposite to me, who seems to treat sleeping as a sport, with her head down on her folded arms, not being great company.

"Hey," Odd says. Under the table, her foot nudges my shin. "_He-ey_."

"What?" I snap at her eventually, from beyond my breakfast. And you can't blame me for being grumpy. Nobody in their right mind who's ever eaten at Pied A Terre and then eaten a British Rail sandwich could ever, ever blame me for being grumpy.

"Do another one," she says. "Like on the train down."

"Beg pardon?" I say, not quite believing my ears. Here's this fucking little bitch, the idiot, the one that thought it was smarter than me and dragged me all the way to fucking _Brighton_, throwing down the gauntlet.

"Yeah," she says, apparently unfazed by the proximity of our seats to the emergency doors, the ones you can open while the train's still moving, which was no mistake, let me tell you. "Call it challenge. Like you did on the way down to the sex addict guy. Destroy somebody else." And the foot still jogging my leg under the table. They could find that foot in the middle of the Thames Bridge, y'know, and all too easily. "Dare you."

Well, Christ, if she has to make a _dare_ out of it, how dare I say no?

Who's in the carriage with us? There's a couple of nuns, who at first glance are a good bet, but I know for experience that nuns are a bust. If they're not absolutely convinced of what they're getting into when they get into it, then they convince themselves pretty bloody quick after that. It's a fucking hard life to lead if you're not convinced. Couple of businessmen, buried behind the Financial Times like I'd like to be, couple of Monday morning students, just the usual. Other than that, it's just me and Angel Odbody.

"Who the hell am I supposed to take the piss out of?" I say to her, and explain that the nuns aren't the easy black-and-white target they might look like to her.

"Not my problem," she says, biting into a Pringle.

Not kidding. That's what she picked for breakfast. Not even fucking flavoured ones either, just plain, just salted. Her hand has to crane up for every one and drop back down to her mouth, by the table.

She says to me, without a single trace of saving irony, without a scrap of the kind of thing that might stop me cutting _off that fucking foot_ if it kicks me just _one more fucking time_, that a man like me should be able to find somebody to destroy in any given crowd. That all I should have to do is cast my eyes about to see all the flaw and hate in human nature and pick up something which deserves to be punished. I should never be able to look around me without feeling utterly disgusted with the ridiculousness, the pointlessness, of most existences.

And yeah, of course, you're all big wastes of air that proper people like me and Sherlock might need someday, but that doesn't mean I know where your weak bits are.

That reminds me; do me a favour? If you're ever stuck in an enclosed space, just give up and hold your nose? Leave the air in case somebody worthy gets stuck in there after you. Start thinking ahead, you selfish fecking bastards.

But then Odd, without lifting her head from her arms, without interrupting the relentless cycle of hand-Pringle-mouth-chew-swallow, says, "I know who _I_ would go for, in this carriage." Now, she came in, sat down, asked for crisps and lowered her head. That she even knows there's anybody else _in_ this carriage is nothing short of a miracle. I tell her so.

"I saw all the shoes that went past me," she says. "Shoes are amazing. Shoes tell you everything."

The nuns in their sensible, beaten Hush Puppies. The students in their cheap but trendy canvas trainers. The businessmen in their leather loafers.

She and I, we are misleading. She is still wearing last night's burlesque heels wrapped up her shins, which in the morning say a whole different thing. I am still wearing yesterdays Doc Martens, chosen to match the parka and not the suit.

Hand-Pringle-mouth, she says, "Are you going to do somebody or not?"

Fine.

Fecking _fine_. She wants a demonstration of my prowess? _Fine_.

"Alright. You're my niece, okay?"

"Do I have to lift my head, Uncle Jim?"

"On the contrary, y'fecking little demon, keep it down."

"_Sold_." She catches my disbelieving stare. "Oi! It was _bloody_ stressful, getting you out of bed, alright?"

I try to ignore that.

_Try._

It begins with me reaching out and putting a hand on her arm. Above the cuff, of course. "Listen, love, as soon as we get you back to London, you'll be feeling better, alright?" She looks to me for her line. Pushes her napkin towards me, and produces a betting pen from her pocket. I just shake my head. She lowers her eyes and keeps her head down. "I know you think I'm doing this to punish you-" The flicker of an eyelid, getting the picture, "But it's only because we all care about you. Me and your mum and dad and Ben and everybody." I run a hand through her hair, which is just about alright since she washed it this morning. In my shower, in my hotel room, which meant I had to steer clear, but at least it lends itself to this. "You shouldn't have run away. We can help you get through this. And we know exactly where to put you to get you over this."

In betting pen, on a napkin, 'It's me, y/n? You r destryin me?'

I, surreptitiously, take the pen and circle 'y'. The rest of me is busy looking selfless and heartbroken, as though this costs him everything and he shows none of it. The rest of me looks as though he wants nothing more in the world than to see her look up at him and say, 'Yes, Uncle Jim. I understand, Uncle Jim. I want to be helped.' Since I deliberately give Odd no lines in this scene, I don't get that.

Dear Mr Moriarty, can you fix it for me…

"See, Georgie-love," I go on, choosing the only real name I have for her, "I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you're hurting yourself as much as the rest of us." One busy, hidden little hand adds to her napkin message.

'LOL, uncle jim! Exactly hu I wz thinking of!'

"We're going to get you," I tell her, and oh yes, I mean it sincerely, "to people who can really help you. Do you get it, Georgie? Do you understand?" Yeah, you little bitch, people who know what you need. A sound fucking beating, maybe a few days' beating to make you appreciate what a pain in the fecking arse you are. His Holiness was never quite such an arse-pain to his doctor-friend in all those months-upon-months as you've been to me this day or so. And yeah, that's a feat, but not the kind you should be proud of. "You'll come out of this a better kind of Georgie, y'know?"

She writes, 'tell me, bcoz that way I lern. wat is ur plan?'

My plan? Oh, sweetie, darling, princess, honey, love, bird, my turtledove, oh _angel_, my plan is not a plan at all.

My plan is a coincidence of serendipitous facts.

There are two things in this world, my delectable hellbound heart, which attract nuns.

Irish accents.

Junkies

Around the time of my last desperate plea for co-operation, the nuns began to converse. A few cliché little pokes later, one of them gets up. Lean in to whisper in my ear. Odd's eyes follow her.

She finishes what she's saying.

I say, "Oh, sister! Would you? Please?"

She waves the other nun over. I get up, and they take my place opposite the unresponsive, obviously-clucking Georgie.

I'm off to another car for the rest of the journey, to read the paper. If she's anything like me, Odd is in a private and especially cruel hell, the sort that kills with kindness.

Jesus fucking loves you, Georgie.

_Deal_ with it, y'foot-jogging bitch.


	10. The Disciple

London, again, and this is little Odd's moment of truth, her pudding-proving, her defining moment, aching hour, as it were. This, in short, is where she finds out if she lives to see another dawn, and considering this day's not long started, that could be a long, long death for my darling Desdemona.

'I live next door to a dead man,' she said, in her initial invitation. And I hope she does. Because I'd like to get the jump on Big Bendy, of course, that's all. I do hope Odd was right. Hope she gets to scamper off into the daylight glow and live out her bizarre little life in peace and yes, perhaps, someday we'll meet again, but not for a very, very long time. When I stop being so fecking irritated with her, then we can meet again. Do coffee or something. Someday we'll look back on this and laugh. If she's right, that is.

But I'll tell you, my friends, it's not looking good for her. I'm scaling up decent places to display her corpse in my head already. And you know, you all _know_, I'm a glass-half-full kind of a fella; I wouldn't be doing that if I didn't have good cause.

But when we got into this taxi, the address she gave, the name of the street, was the one just round the corner from mine.

Now, either that's one brassy big balls-out move from an absent friend of mine, or Odd needs to not look so blithely happy in the seat next to me.

"I'm going to want to balance you over a sharp rock and pile church doors on your belly, aren't I, sweetheart?"

She pulls that grim little smile in over her teeth, considering, and nods gently. "Yeah. More than likely." She hears me swearing, slumping against the window, but doesn't turn round. "Look, just bear in mind, at least now you're up and about, yeah? Couldn't say that this time yesterday."

"Didn't want to either..."

"Don't sulk, Uncle Jim."

"I'm not your uncle anymore."

"…Aw. Well, listen, if you do get into an uncontrollable rage and batter my face in early, my next suggestion, after bacon sandwiches, was going to be to look at what you actually know about the death? Probably Molly Hooper first, and then to try and find Watson. I know you haven't been keeping tabs and you really should have, but-"

"How do you know all thi-… Wait, _early_? What do you mean if I bash your face in '_early'_, what's that all about?"

Odd looks round, not at me but out the window, then leans forward in her seat to stop the cab.

It's a dark, stinking little entry, down into the mews behind the houses. That's where she stands in her sparkly wraparound shoes and my parka, throws open her arms and says, "Home sweet home."

Then she tells a story which could be true or false, and I will pass onto you the bits that I can hear over the blaring car horn of my own soul-crushing disgust. I mean, with _me_ as well as her. I've _listened_ to this shit…

"I used to sleep in that entry. And then this one day this big tall gent and his little mate come along and walk right past me, and then the tall one comes back. Good-looking, y'know, and a bit posh on it and I'm thinking, oh, love, your time has come! He's one of these proper Bruce Wayne philanthropic society types, he's going to save you and turn you into a My Fair Lady. Well, he never. For the best, I suppose; give a girl a fish…

"He gave me fifty quid instead. And he points up, just like I'm pointing up now, at this window and he says, 'Do you know the man who lives there?' And no, no, I didn't, but I did know he was giving me fifty quid, so I said I did. And him, this gent, this oddly alluring gent with the nice scarf, he says to me that there was money to be made from knowing all about the man in that flat."

I have to lean down behind her, in order to follow exactly the line of her pointing, to make absolutely sure that this is what I think it is.

And I'm right, y'know, she's pointing up at the back window of _my_ flat.

"You spied on me for Sherlock Holmes."

"Well, yes and no."

"You _spied_ on me. For _Sherlock Holmes_."

"Yes, a _little bit_ but-" The weird, convulsive way my hands claw out towards her throat, she has no trouble stopping them. Brave as the crackhead I pretended she was, just grabs my wrists and eases them away. "But I wasn't always as good as I am now. I was hanging out in the mews that afternoon watching for you, and you came out. And I'm watching, trying not to be conspicuous, but-"

"Oh, there it is, right there. Never _try_ to blend in, there's no surer way to stick out."

"Which is, I think, why that was the first day in the years I'd been bunking down there, that you ever so much as looked at me. Anyway, turned out you were only going to the shop. But on your way back, you looked at me again, and I think I pissed you off-"

"_More than likely_."

"Because you took a dozen eggs out of the bag, and a century out of your wallet and you pointed to a Merc across the street, which turned out to belong to an MP, and you said-"

"_I want two of those eggs on every fucking window…_" I remember. I don't remember why. I remember I watched from the window upstairs and fucking pissed myself laughing, but there was a reason and I don't remember. "That was you?"

"And I said to myself, how, in good conscience, can I turn on that man? This is while I was running from a minder and a dog, but I meant it, and I still do. I used your hundred and his fifty for a change of clothes and a cheap room and I never looked back."

Yeah, okay. All seems fair enough. Makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Put it all together and there's no holes there at all, now, are there? That's a very beautiful story of a young lady who's loyalty was better bought with fun and games (and fifty quid more), than with vicious self-interest. That's two fingers up to _you,_ my (apparently) attractive, well-scarfed mucker, and no mistake about it!

Nah.

Question time, Odbody.

"So when did he get the chance to teach you all about inductive and deductive reasoning then, oh moon of my delight?"

"When I went round to tell him about all the strange deliveries going into the flat."

"…What deliveries? I never get deliveries, I don't even get my _post_ to the flat."

"I know. But he didn't."

Fucking hell, she played Sherlock Holmes. The way she tells it, she didn't take the money off him, but took lessons instead. The money she managed with pickpocketing and short-cons round town which, the more he taught her, got better and better.

Oh, but don't think for a second she wasn't spying on me. She tells me that outright. She used to climb to my window like fucking Heathcliff to keep an eye. It's just that none of it ever found its way to Sherlock. Whatever she learned, she kept for herself.

Our devoted disciple.

At the feet of both masters and serving neither.

She learned how to put a disguise together, how to walk in anywhere, how to spot the weak points and analyse the signs, what clues meant something and which were useless to her. Best of both worlds. She treated my window like a fecking instructional video and followed me out in the world for her practical lessons. I mean, she followed _him_ too, but that's beside the point, she followed _me_. She knows _names_. People I've dealt with, knows where I met them or who I sent and how I did it.

She stand there telling me all this and she knows, she must know, that all she's doing is making her own murder all the more imperative.

"_How long has all this been going on!_"

"Since just after Beijing." Aw, Jesus. This is a heart attack. This is actually what a heart attack feels like; this is all black and red round the sides of my eyes and down my left arm and everything, this is _actually_ a heart attack. Odd steps in to hold me up. "He knew you were looking into him, so he looked into you."

"He didn't know where I lived, Odd, you're lying to me."

"You knew where _he_ lived."

"So did the whole fucking country! Amateur bastard lets his clients in at the front door!"

"Not to sound like one of those bloody believers but… he's Sherlock Holmes, Uncle Jim."

…Fair point well made. "If I said the name Yusuf Shikra to you?"

"The bombmaker?"

"…Then you didn't tell him about that."

"No. 'Course not, don't be stupid."

"You covered up for me. Why?"

"Same reason I didn't tell you he was keeping tabs. I learn more by watching than by cutting it all off midflow. Never hear of the golden goose?"

I'm still having that heart attack, by the way, thanks for asking. It's a bit better now, like, but I could still be dying. Jesus, you're a callous shower of bastards, aren't you? At least Odd gets me to check how many fingers she's holding up. What are you lot doing about it, hm? Just sitting there, chewing your gum, thinking about another bag of Doritos, maybe changing your underwear sometime this century, watching me very possibly dying while my vision splits and wiggles. Watching! Like I'm a QI marathon on _Dave_. Does that make you feel intelligent, you _wankers_?

Watching!

How much can you learn by _watching_?

"…Say I was going to give you another day to live – _four_, love, four fingers – what would you suggest we do with it?"

"Terrorize your ex."

"Then we need to change. Let's get inside. You can use a key this time, Odd, love, won't that be fun and different?"

"Not really. I stole your spare from the superintendant about three months ago."

…Die screaming, bitch. "You know how to work the grill, I assume. You can put the bacon on." And should I refrain from slamming your head inside the thing and leaving a rather alluring blackened griddle pattern on your precious lily cheek, you may count yourself, my dear, amongst the angels, for you are blessed.

You must have learned how to play at being one of those, yes?


	11. Molly

The most important person in any murder investigation is the last one to have seen the victim alive. Odd's words, not mine. Probably not hers either. They have that dictatorial, delusions of grandeur, public schoolboy's vengeance upon the textbook sort of tone. I think I can guess where she got that from. The case of one who fakes his own death is to be treated much as any other murder, except in the fact that the culprit is known and motive becomes the most imperative fact to be discovered.

"…Did you take notes when you went to visit or have you invested in a Dictaphone?"

"I like his voice. He's easy to concentrate on. How's your heart?"

"You _fancy_ him."

"And? So do you."

"_Do not_!"

Odd laughs at me. She has every right to. That reaction was supposed to come from _her_, not me, and she turned it back. That kind of playground trickery didn't come from her other tutor, I'll tell you that, and she would have had to find me in very fine form to learn it from me. She mistakes my expression as I puzzle it out for silent rage and looks back out the taxi window. Goes on, "You should've gone to Doctor Hooper right after he jumped, before the autopsy. That was your best chance, really."

But excuse me, love, I was dead too. And nobody came and scraped me up off the concrete and nobody wailed over my apparent corpse and had to be given a blanket that was on the cover of every paper the following morning. I picked myself up, and I couldn't hear anything or see straight from that squib going off in my mouth. I nursed myself back to health, thank you very much. Chasing off after the coroner wasn't exactly a priority.

"Wait, what autopsy, who did they autopsy?"

Odd shrugs, but she knows. Of course she does. She goes where the action is and I, as I just laid out quite clearly, was out of fucking action. Whoever they coroner-ized at St Barts, it was not His Curlyheadedness.

"The moment-to-moment continuation of your existence, Odbody, depends entirely on your full and good-hearted co-operation in all matters. You do realize that, don't you?"

"He died that morning. Homeless fella. Hopeless fucking skaghead, but he knew his limits, usually, only this time he didn't, or the dose was rigged and he wandered sideways off a rooftop."

"You said 'usually'-"

"All hail the great detective."

"-so you knew him."

She shrugs, and shakes her head and says, 'Not really', all at once.

There is a version of possible events which flatters me and is a little bit sentimental. In this version, Odbody discovers that a friend of hers has been steamrollered as collateral damage in Sherlock's little exit plan. At this, she realizes what a hard, callous bastard he is and resolves to destroy him. But she knows nobody can or is allowed to do that except for me and hence here we stand.

That's a bit flattering and sentimental, though, isn't it?

"So this rigged dose that your mate got right before he stumbled off a building just the right height and in just the right direction so that if you were going to try and somehow recreate that event you'd be able to study it, any idea who rigged it, angel?" No reply. "Sweetheart?" Who'd bother with sentimental, when the evil that girls do can be such fun? "Angel-drawers?"

"Are you finished?"

"I can dig up more terms of endearment. I'm sure I still have a little Irish about me somewhere-"

"Yeah, but we're here."

Nice little place, old terrace, out near Stratford where they're doing all the building for that bastard bloody Olympics nobody wants to shut up about. You're not going to watch it, you know. Just because you live here doesn't mean you're going to pay any more attention than you usually do. We're just going to end up with a load of fucking stadiums we can't afford and six weeks of _impossible_ working conditions for the ordinary decent criminal. Fucking typical of Brits to ramp up security just when I could be doing all my international business out of the simple comfort of the pub. The _bastards_.

Sorry. Molly's place. Nice, ordinary little place, pay the driver, watch him go.

"Wait - why are we here when she's at work?"

"Are you going to walk into St Bart's large as life and threaten her over the slab, James?" …Fair point well made. She calls me James again and I'll have her skull for a soup bowl, but it's a fair cop. "I'll go round the back and let you in and you can wait for her, yeah?"

"Got a key for this one and all, do you?"

And it seems that dear sweet Odbody is not quite so unflappable as she'd like to seem sometimes, because she's a bit angry with me when she spins and she snaps, "You take a walk around the block and by the time you get back I'll be in, alright?"

After a moment, unable to resist, says me, "Oo-_oo_-ooh."

"_Fucking_ grow up."

"Touched a couple of nerves, have I?"

"_Fuck_ off."

"Unoriginal, Odd. You'd shout at me for that."

This time she just flounces off, not a word, shaking her raggy ginger head. And fuck it. What else am I doing today? I'm off, obedient old me, for a walk around the block. Bright, bracing London day and all that. It's good, it puts your head in the right place. Like, I find myself thinking that there's no sense letting Odd get all wound up. Good to keep her in her place, no doubt, but best be kind. She thinks she's helping, after all. Acting like I _need_ her, bless her heart. Men have died for less, I know, and indeed, men have died _because_ I needed them in some way or another and… well, let's be blunt, lots of people die for lots of reasons. But that'll come to her soon enough. I should be nicer to Odd, day to day, as long as she can Scheherazade me away from the final act.

And at least she's honest. If she says she's going to do a thing, she does it. When I get around the block and walk right up to Molly's front door, I don't even have to knock. She's waiting. I do quite like people who are as good as their word.

But as she lets me in, she starts to slip past me, out the door, onto the steps. I put a hand out to stop her.

"You're not staying?"

"You don't need me."

Absolutely not. Of course I don't. I wholeheartedly agree, little Oddling. "Why aren't you staying?"

"I _can't_."

"Why the fuck not?" For an insane second I'm brutally afraid she's going to tell me straight that I've lost it, that nobody can see her but me and if she's not in the room I won't make myself look crazy talking to her. Hard to be scary when you're bitching at an imaginary homeless girl turned cabaret singer turned… amateur… _Morilock_… No, terrible, horrible, bad word, not even a word, never think that hideous monstrosity ever again no, it's not a thing, it never was, it doesn't exist it's a beast, a chimera, it must be slain, linguistically slain with plosives and sharp consonants.

"I met her before from hanging around with Sherlock. Anyway, don't you want a plan B?"

"You're plan B, are you? Safe and warm rest I in the knowledge that plan B waits, and that it is you. No evil shall I fear, no worry cloud my mind while an angel waits to snatch me from the monster's jaws-"

Again, she just stops talking, just slides on past me and down the steps. She's still going. She didn't take the hint about not going. Honest she might be, but thick is a definite.

She's gone, y'know. I'm by my onesies again. Which I haven't really been since it happened, if she's been in and out to feed the cat. I mean, this time she _actually_ goes. When I all but _ordered_ her to stay, no less. But y'know what, I don't even care because she can just, just, like… _fuck_ off herself, then. I don't even care.

Molly gets home around sunset and sighs her away to the kitchen, kicking off her shoes before she's taken her coat off, swinging a white plastic takeaway bag and cradling like a child a very distinctive blue one.

Out of the dim corner beyond the breakfast bar, a voice that makes her jump, "Honey, I'm home."

To my utter alarm and disgust, I hear, clear as a bell, Odd's voice asking if that's really the best I could come up with when I've had all afternoon. Which is all well and good, little miss, but I had to catch the repeat of Loose Women, and making a sandwich in a kitchen you don't know is a bit of a chore, so 'all afternoon' is a bit of an exaggeration. Odd could have brought me a sandwich, y'know, and did she? Did she bugger. A nice deli sandwich with horseradish, because Molly doesn't keep horseradish, apparently. Likes her ham sandwiches, apparently, as dead as the rest of her dead little life amongst the dead.

Molly Hooper jumps when she hears my voice.

Then she steadies. Really, irritatingly quickly. Puts down her evening meal and entertainment and mutters, "What are _you_ doing here?"

Which…

I won't lie to you; it's not exactly the reaction I was expecting. And I'm not ashamed to say it knocks me back a little bit, and that's what gives her the opportunity to go on, "Well, I've been expecting you for _weeks_. Starting to half believe you _were_ dead."

Molly. Molly fucking Hooper. Molly you'd-never-guess-I-was-a-pathologist-like-with-real-actual-bodies-because-I'm-so-perky-and-cute _fucking_ Hooper is talking to me like she's just scraped me off her _shoe_.

"Well, I've had a lot on."

"Oh, yes, you _look_ like you've been enjoying a full and healthy lifestyle these last few weeks, certainly." Why didn't I get a knife while she was still out? Why is she putting a plate in the microwave to warm and taking the lid off her Chinese which, I will not begrudge to say, smells bloody beautiful, most tempting indeed, but the question is still _why_? Why isn't she _cowering_? "Your skin's loose," she goes on, "so you haven't been eating. And between the pink eyes and the yellow jaundice I can guess what you've been using as a substitute. Tremors, sunken eyes, you're sleeping too much. Not exactly looking the part when it comes to the globe-trotting supervillain man of mystery, Jim. I mean, you don't even look _gay_ anymore."

"I've been _busy_, Molly."

"Of course you have." Almost violently, not really showing the proper respect at all, she dumps her chow mein out on the plate when the microwave dings and spins to glare at me. "Look, can we just get this over with so I can have dinner in peace?"

_Seriously._ Molly fucking Hooper is talking to me like I'm some arrogant teenager she just wants out of the way.

When did this happen?

I thought I slept for two weeks. Okay, four, tops. Losing track of things a bit. But clearly it's been years and now I'm not anybody and she's had time to get all… _mean and horrible_.

"You're too late, Jim," she says. "I don't know where he is anymore. We were in touch for a while and now we're not. To be honest I wondered why he stayed in one place for so long but my God… if you're waiting, what's to say… Anyway, he's not waiting anymore. You're welcome, by the way, he made a point of it, to that last number I had for him. Which is what makes me think it probably won't do you any good."

…No.

No.

No.

Sorry. Broken record. I know. Feel that way. No. No. No.

Phone rings. Not thinking. Answer it.

Hoarse, bit lost, "Yes?"

"It's Odd." Private line. How? "Listen, you're fucked. Plan B can get you out of this with a bit of dignity. Repeat after me."

So what Molly Hooper hears next is, "Where are you calling from?"

Then, obedient old me, I get up and go to the window, looking out and up between the slats of the blinds. And I say, "How long?"

A pause, and then I turn to Molly. Molly, in the meantime, has had the _gall_, the sheer _guts_ to start stuffing her face, but that just makes it all the more satisfying to take her by the shoulders and demand 'those numbers'.

Makes sense. She thinks I've got Sherlock on the phone. She thinks he's been watching and chosen now to interrupt. The numbers, it seems to Molly, mean more than she ever believed, more than just a phone number. I get the only information she has to offer me and she thinks of me in a much more appropriate light – less a mild annoyance, more a vicious psychopath she shouldn't take so lightly.

God I'm such a _planner_. I need to improvise like this all the time. Improvising _works_. His must be why he did so much of it

I shake the noodles down her bloody little throat and she gives it to me. Then she gives me a pen so I can write it down. Then I charge out dynamically as though running off into the night to meet my nemesis. I meet a cab on the corner that already has Odd in the backseat, just hanging up.

Fall in next to her.

Cab moves.

Me, looking out the window.

Horrible, irritating little hand taking my sleeve.

"I heard her. She's gone all bitchfaced since she doesn't have anybody pine for all day."

Me, with no script now, still not knowing what to say. Me feeling like somebody hollowed my brain out of my skull like the stringy shite in the middle of a pumpkin. Me wondering what the fuck just happened and when I turned into a thing that even _Molly fucking Hooper_ could just walk all over at will. She always did this to me, y'know. She _always_ decided what bar or what restaurant or what film or what time and whether or not we got popcorn or had desserts. She dumped me, that fucking bitch.

"She _dumped_ me_, _Odd."

"Come back and kill her. Right when he's coming back. Little welcome present."

Me not being comforted at all. Except maybe a bit. Except maybe stealing that idea.

Odd, being sweet, her best nursery school teacher of a voice, "Do you want to go home and get pissed?"

"…_Yes_."

"Do you want me to read _The Gruffalo_ so you can explain what it really means?"

"…_Yes_."

"Should we call Sebastian?"

"…_Later_."

"Is there anything else I can do?"

Chinese.

Want a fucking Chinese.


	12. In My Defence

Your honour, I was not responsible for my actions. I was drugged, your honour. I was full of Chinese and despair, and while I was weak she plied me with alcohol. And not just alcohol, your honour, but the really bloody good stuff, from the back of the cupboard. Moran brought it back from Paris that time. And, your honour, I had been humiliated so that I couldn't resist her. I hadn't the strength in me to refuse, and indeed I was made to feel that refusal would only mean I was as useless as Molly Hooper had seemed to think. So you see, a plea of diminished responsibility is neither unfounded nor gratuitous.

The events of the evening that followed that disastrous attempt on Molly began innocuously enough, just the way Odd had promised. Scummy bad food that's bad for me, hearty discussion of my theories on certain children's stories. Eventually I called Moran but he wasn't there. I left a message.

In the interests of fairness, I should point out that it wasn't Odd herself who first suggested the absinthe. She was lying on the sofa, as though she had nothing to do with it all. Then there was a clatter in the kitchen and Sherly, _somehow_, _mysteriously_, was in the back of the cupboards, poking her nose in around the collection of Good Stuff. Odd was on her feet pretty sharpish, grabbing her down from there lest she hurt herself, then exploring the cupboard for herself.

But I will point out also that she and the cat are in league with each other. Think about it. She's been doing the feeding, changing the litter tray, scratching behind the ears, for a good couple of weeks now. And as soon as we got in, though my furry grey friend came immediately to me (she's not stupid), she was looking at Odd. Before I was on the phone she was lying on Odd's chest, and yet when I finished she was gone, in a high cupboard I don't think she could have opened by herself. These are _facts_ and you may make of them, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what you will.

Odd, right now, is on the floor beyond the coffee table.

Or is she?

I can't see her. That's where she fell down and I haven't seen her move and sometimes I can hear her giggling, but I can't see her. How do I know? I put it to you, milard, that she may simply have ceased to fucking exist. Which, yes, would spare me a lot of trouble, certainly, won't deny that, but my case for why I am completely devoid of any responsibility for this night rather collapses without somebody to accuse, does it not?

"Odd…"

"Hm? Hm, Jm?" Giggle-giggle.

"Are you still really real? I can't see you so are you still really real like properly real where you've got hair and fingers and stuff?"

"I can't see you either Jim, so are you still real?"

…Oh my god…

"I can see your feet under the coffee table, though…"

Oh, that's okay then. If I have feet they have to be coming from somewhere, so that's okay then, if I have feet. But what if it's not okay? What if I'm not me anymore, I'm just a pair of feet on the edge of the rug, under the coffee table, and there's no more rest of me, and I don't have my brain and Sherlock comes back and I don't have my brain? What do I do if he comes back and I don't have my brain? You the People can fuck off, that whole courtroom fantasy is over now that I might actually have a big genuine problem to deal with. He could come back any minute now and-

_Somebody knocks the door_.

Somebody knocks the fucking door while I don't have my brain, and I can't exactly get up to answer if I'm only a pair of feet and especially if I don't have my brain. Knock-knock!

Who's there?

Fucked.

Fucked who?

Me, that's who, absolutely fucked.

Turns out Odd exists, though. She sits up, so that's alright. Or she's just a head and shoulders sort of hovering there, that's possible too. But then she hauls herself all the way up and says, "Should I get it?"

"Quickly, Odd, do I have a head?" She looks and makes sure, and then nods solemnly. So I sit a bit straighter, smooth my hair, straighten my cuffs. "Right. Fine. You can let him in." And you know, for a moment, I'm almost proud of her; she does it all with great dignity, walking tall, one cautious foot in front of the other. Opens the door with delicacy and an eye to security. Then sighs and sinks down on her knees. "It's only Colonel Moran."

"Moran, y'fucker! I'll have your scapulae for sideplates! What the fuck are you doing here?"

"You left a message, did I want to come over and get pissed and… Jim, there's a girl untying my shoelaces."

"Odd, dear, what are you doing to the nice man's shoes?"

"…Don't want you hanging yourself."

That's quite nice, actually, quite a sweet thing to say, and that, your honour (oh, you're back, that was a quick recess, Judge, no teabags left?), is the _only_ reason why I cry out in her defence when he kicks her off. I mean he _physically_ kicks her, it looks _sore_.

"Have you lost your mind?" he says. Which, funny he should mention it, really- "You're drinking that shit with an underage girl?"

"It's not shit!" she cries, and scuttles back to us, takes the bottle off the coffee table and holds it to her, stroking away all the pain of such a scathing comment.

"And she's not underage, Seb. She's… She doesn't even _count_. It's fifty-fifty between some kind of evil angel and a figment of my- can you see her? You can make it official, while you're here. Anyway, don't worry about it; she already knows everything and I'm going to peel her like a banana come the morning anyway, so-"

"If you let me live another day I'll get you Doctor Watson's new address."

"-Come the morning after tomorrow morning, so sit down, would you, and have a drink, and lighten the fuck up, Seb."

"Yeah, Colonel, you can tell me all about… Colonelling."

Odd is perfectly serious and that's why I end up laughing. Which sets her off. Which isn't really a good idea because the old military nerve is a bit of a raw one with dear Sebastian and it's not really funny if you know the story, but she doesn't so what's the odds…

Heh. _Odds_ on Odd.

I'm a bit caught up in that. Thus it is something of a shock to find him leaning in rather close to my face all of a sudden and saying, "Don't call me when you need somebody to get rid of her."

"No," I say, all strong and defiant like I can be when I want to be, "I'm going to manage that myself, thank you."

"Sure you are," says he. I enquire as to just what exactly that's supposed to mean, whilst graciously reminding him that I could play the girl's funeral march on his spine like a xylophone, were I so inclined. "When was the last time you got blood on your hands?"

"The last time I wasn't wearing a suit that was too nice to get blood on. Which was _never_."

I don't really _see_ Odd, I just know she's there, little head lifting up between us. Pokes me in the shoulder with one hand, and says, "Jim." Pokes Sebastian with her other hand and says, "Colonel Moran." Then brings both hands together and in a sort of wiggly, hippyish movement, indicates the space between us, "_Sexual tension._"

Sebastian moves to kick her again, but I put a stop to it this time. Well, it's more than she's made me laugh again and I sort of roll sideways. It's not me he wants to kick, so he pulls back. And as I slide onto the floor, I wonder aloud if maybe that's it, if maybe little Sebby might not be a teeny bit jealous that I'm drinking with somebody else other than him.

"Don't be jealous," Odd says, shaking her head gravely. "I'm not a person, really. I'm nearly almost a ghost, actually. That's not like being a person. Like before they execute somebody and they can have whatever they want, because they're not really a person anymore."

But while she's saying all this, the absinthe bottle is down near my face. And one of her index fingers is moving up and down along the edge of the label. Indicating the picture.

_The Green Fairy._

It takes a moment for me to get it, but then it's really, really, hilarious. And I just have to share it, so I take the bottle off her and use the coffee table to climb up to show Sebastian. "Look! Look! That's _you_, that is! Because you're jealous, and-" Odd tries to shush me then, so violently it almost chokes her, tugs on my trouser leg and ends up just pulling me down again. Seb leaves us there, because he's got a stick up his arse about something or other.

I should have said that out loud; there's a great joke to be made there. Odd would have appreciated that.

"We should get pissed more often."

"But I'm going to be dead though."

"Oh yeah. …Well, that's no good. You know if you promise to be good and never ever tell anybody anything you know, then I'll believe you. I'm honour-bound to take you at your word, when you've been so good at keeping your mouth shut all this time." And I know what you're thinking, that that's just the alcohol talking and I don't really mean it. And in the morning that'll probably turn out to be true. But now, here and now, I mean it.

And Odd shakes her head.

"Bad plan," she says.

"What the fuck are you talking about, it's a wonderful plan."

"No, it's-"

"_Don't argue with me when I'm having a wonderful plan!_"

"No-no-not-at-all-but-"

"_NO FUCKING BUTS, ODBODY!"_

Jesus Christ, that's what you get for trying to give somebody an option. If she'd taken me up on that tonight and tried to hold me to it in the morning, there might have been some shadow of a chance for us occasionally getting pissed together, down the years. We would have enjoyed that. I would have watched her grow and mature and all that bollocks. Occasionally she would have done little jobs for me. She's connected to Sherlock, that's _bound_ to be useful for something at some stage…

And she says, "Nah, wouldn't work."

I roll over, face to the floorboards, and cry out to nobody, "Why do all the fecking bearable bastards have fecking death wishes?"

And then something slams up against the floor from underneath. I jump up onto all fours. Odd wriggles towards the source of the noise so I know I didn't imagine it. And yeah, lo and behold, the noise comes again. Great big thunky noise from underneath.

"What's happening?" Odd breathes, "Is it crocodiles?"

"…We're five floors up, angel."

"…Really tall crocodiles."

Thunky-thunk again. And this time, a big, grumbly bellowing with it, "Keep tha fakking noise daan up there."

Neighbours.

One of the neighbours.

Odd slaps the floor over the noise like it just pinched her arse, scowling at it.

"Nah," she says. "Nah, I'm not having that."

She gets up. And she helps me up.

No, _no_, your honour, she _pulls_ me up. And then she _drags_ me behind her and _throws_ me through the door ahead of her. She is terrifying and determined and I have no choice whatever to nod a long and echo her sentiments as if I agree with her. I fear for my life otherwise, Judge. She _hauls_ me after her to the stairs and _hurls_ me down the first flight.

I am inebriated and helpless.

I have no free will and no say in this, no option but to do as this terrifying demoniac creature says, or feel its almighty wrath.

So you see, _your honour_, ladies and gentlemen of my peers, courtroom reporters and media circus and _Jesus_ this is a big crowded fantasy, I am absolutely not responsible for anything that may or may not happen in the flat below.

Unless it involves a musical number. If that happens then that was my idea.


	13. The Morning After The Night Before

Light is made of glass. Did you know that? I didn't. But I have learned this through suffering, and you must learn from my mistakes. Don't open your eyes. Don't ever open your eyes. That's how you get up with shards of glass inside your brain.

That's a hangover joke, by the way.

On a more serious note, could somebody please dial 999? I have a really awful feeling that I might actually be dying this time. This here isn't a hangover joke like the other one, this is deadly fucking serious, I need medical attention and I'd be much obliged if somebody could fetch a doctor? Very likely this is what death is.

Either that, or we're past that, and hell is one Christ-humping Mary-mother-of-God hangover, where Satan pokes you, once, delicately, exploratively, in the ribs and says, "Are you awake? Wake up." I try explaining, all calm and rational, that I don't want to. That I may in fact be dead this time for real and therefore to wake up would constitute an abomination against God and nature. And Satan says in reply, "But this is important." What is also important is that Satan slide me down from the sofa and drag me somewhere where I can wretch up the contents of my skin without ruining the carpet, but Satan is rather adamant that she and I might have a bit of a problem that I should be aware of. And if, in fact, this is hell after all, I'm going to be seeing a lot of Satan soon enough. I should be ingratiating myself. All of this could add up to ten minutes off from having a white-hot poker shoved up my arse while I'm forced to lick the devil's bunions.

When (when, not if) I am institutionalized, I shall tell them all about my grandmother, and her ideas about Judeo-Christian damnation. I'll be out in a week.

Carefully shielding myself from all the glass flying about, I peel open an eye. It's not Satan after all, it's Odd. Which is just a fucking lovely way to kick off my fucking morning, with the instant and visceral contemplation of harvesting her organs and feeding them to homeless people. "Problem, darling?"

"Did we kill your downstairs neighbour last night?"

...Um.

The internal video of last night ends just after the Gruffalo. Brief discussion re: mistaken casting of Robbie Coltrane, analogue with Highsmith's Ripley, agreeable exploration of metanarrative and power of storytelling, … and then the little BBC intermission card of the girl with the creepy clown doll.

"Why do you ask?"

I'll spare you the ugly details but there may or may not be a mobile phone video and one of us may or may not be in the foreground doing an utterly stellar John Travolta while the other one giggles and shakes the camera so you can't see it properly, and there may or may not be a certain downstairs neighbour of mine slumped suspiciously still in the back corner.

There may or may not be… certain stains.

"…Well, we're not stupid. If we did do anything last night I'm sure we were careful."

"Are you sure? This was after Colonel Moran was here."

"Sebastian was here?"

"You called him a green fairy. To his face."

"…So you should check on downstairs."

"You're not coming with me?"

"No. People would know me, so they could say they saw me acting suspiciously. You'll be dead before they could put you away anyway."

Odd sighs. Odd folds her arms and puts them on the sofa. Then puts her head on her arms. She's far too close for comfort and my own breath bounces back at me off her forehead and oh, Christ, Jesus, it's foul. I reach up and shove her. A thunk and slap of flesh and she hits the floor. The voice comes up muffled out of the rug, "Okay, but we need to be at Baker Street for eleven."

Yeah, 'Baker Street'. That's what she said. I'm ninety-odd percent that's what she said. Best just… _check_. "Excuse me?"

"Hudson goes out today. Her and Edith go for tea and a chat and then they argue about the bill."

Dear Lord, she's caught 'em all. I may well be the shiny Charizard, but her collection is shockingly complete. Wonder what she thinks of Anderson…

But there's no time to ask her. Sick and groaning like an old-fashioned monster, Odd peels herself one more time off the floor, limb by limb, but by sheer force of will she puts herself back on her feet, one two, brushes last night's clothes into something presentable, and sways until she finds her balance. It's a gargantuan effort, an impossible beauty that inspires me enough to roll onto my back.

"So I'll go and check downstairs and you can start on the ice water and black coffee, because it's after nine."

In the morning. There's a nine, in the morning. Criminality being what it is, I'm usually a lot more nocturnal than this. Apparently, though, there's a nine in the morning, and now that I'm awake there's no rolling over. When you're not comatose anymore, your body realizes that it's in need of serious help. It keeps you up so you can scream, needs be.

So that you can think, 'How the fuck can she walk?' She drank at least as much as I did. So that you can think, 'I must be getting old'. And cry out in depression and shout for God to help you, but God doesn't come. The cat comes instead and starts nipping the ends of your hanging fingers to drag you up. I told you before, she's in league with the cat. Sherly is her familiar. Which isn't fair, because Sherly's mine. A lot of the time, in the flat, Sherly's all I've got, and now Sherly's flapping about with Odd and doing her bidding and I can't even trust her anymore. Well, I'll be having none of that, thank you very much. I flap her away until she stops biting me and stalks off with her tail in the air, prissy little bitch.

As is so often the way, my thoughts upon waking up are dimly familiar. This is probably what I was thinking before I fell asleep.

Odd's voice, in the back of my mind, corrects, "_Passed out_." I have a terrible, horrible thought and then think, 'No.' Moran saw her. All those people at the burlesque club. The chef from the chippy. The nuns on the train. She's corroborated.

But that's the thought, pretty much. What else do I know about her except that she exists? None of her stories add up, when you think about it. Name, age, mental conditions, all of these are empty slots. And I haven't made that much of an effort to find out. She's bought me with facts, with information. Things she knows and has no way of knowing. Now, don't get me wrong, facts are brilliant. Information is king and it's better than currency. The world that I live in is built of secrets and lies and deceptions. Hers isn't. Hers is honest. It's about chips and addresses and Hudson goes out with Edith for tea once a week. Hard and basic and honest and useful.

That's great. That's working out wonderful for me.

I do have one good, tangible memory of last night, y'know. I remember I told her she could live. That I'd trust her and let her go and we'd say no more about it. I remember thinking it was a wonderful idea. And here in the bright, glassy nine a.m., it still almost feels like a wonderful idea. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not entirely heartless. I get a little speck of sentiment in my eye just thinking about it. She would be grateful and I would be gracious.

She did spy on me, though.

Spied on Sherlock too.

Did deceive, obfuscate and inveigle me into this whole venture.

Whatever way you look at it, a lot of her great, valuable facts could be about me. It's a vicious, sad and painful fact. And when you consider the facts objectively and logically, she's a greater risk to me than she could ever be a boon.

Still…

The door eases open again.

"Alive?"

"Just. The ambulance crew were just arriving."

Shite. Now I have to call Moran for an alibi. And if I really said what Odd says I said, he's not going to give it up easily. And the paramedics will call the police and he'll tell them it was that bastard from upstairs who he's never liked because I beat his offer for the penthouse and then there will be police and one of them will say 'Aren't you Rich Brooke?' and I'll have to say, 'Didn't that guy die?' and the whole hideous thing will just drag on and on and on and on…

"Why haven't you moved?" Odd says, with the dull half-interest of a teenager. She doesn't _care_ that I haven't moved, but it pisses her off. Then she sighs, swings her head around on her shoulders, "Do you want _me_ just to go to Baker Street then? You can get over being dead and I'll bring back Doctor Watson's forwarding address?"

"How'd you lose track of him?"

"What?"

And this is almost interesting. This helps me sit up. "Watson, you daft little cat. You keep such good tabs, how'd you lose him?"

"I knew he was moving. I wasn't there the day it happened, though, so I-"

"See, this is what happens when you're off following the minor players. You lose the big picture."

"That's not what happened."

"I believe you, though."

"You had _Take Another Little Piece of My Heart_ on repeat. I stuck around in case you did something stupid." I'd like to get my eyes properly open when she says that. I'd like to get a good look at her and make sure that's true. I remember the Erma Franklin, I remember the potential for something stupid to happen. Of course I don't remember Odd, because I didn't know her, but I wish I knew for sure. Still, the whole wakening process is taking time, and before I can quite manage it, she's back to the door, saying she'll be back before lunch.

There's this part of me, awfully small and rusted over and seized up tight which manages, very slightly, to creak. Sounds almost like, 'Don't'. Don't come back. We'll call it quits. Don't come back.

And no, it's not just because I want the pleasure of hunting her down for a while before her inevitable death.

Though, admittedly, that should be good fun.


	14. The Sherly Deception

Odd got the address. She was back before twelve, so I can't say it gave her too much trouble. It wouldn't have given me much trouble either. If I'd decided to find out where John Watson's hiding himself these days it wouldn't have taken me any time at all. Christ, silly bastard's probably listed. No, no, I know how I would have found him. I know exactly how I would have done it. No Sherlock, right? After all those months and months of Sherlock on tap and now no Sherlock; that poor, lost gentleman, he's having trouble filling the hours. Sleeping a lot. Not getting out much. Eating a lot of cornflakes. Sad heap of shite that he is, he's sitting about wondering what he used to do before Sherlock. Thick bastard, sitting about pining, playing the fucking Guinevere. John Watson, ladies and gents, is looking for a job. Get his address off any given hospital from here to Dublin.

That's how I would have done it, if I'd done it.

I didn't have to do it, though.

"Odbody?"

"Yes?"

"I thought your stated intention was to get me off my arse and doing things again?"

"Yes."

"So why did you do it for me? I know how I would have done it. I would have done it."

"Because you were hungover. And you said the police were coming. And you needed to talk to Colonel Moran. Anyway, it was only grunt work. Why should you do grunt work?"

I _was_ hungover. I am, if I'm honest, still a little bit hungover. And the police _did_ come, but only to ask if I saw anything strange last night. Preliminary stuff. And yes, I called and spoke to Moran.

That was… It was interesting. We'll say 'interesting' because that's what people say when they're trying to avoid the term 'fucking harrowing', which is what it was. In short, he doesn't want to be friends anymore. That's about the size of the pissy, childish behaviour I had to put up with down the phone. He doesn't agree with me that it doesn't matter if somebody called you a name if they don't actually remember doing it. They're not _denying_ that they did it, only stating that for them it never really happened.

He told me to tell the cops that when they come about Downstairs.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Odbody was justifying herself.

"So are you the one going to do my grunt work, then, precious?"

She's watching me, wondering if I'm taking the piss. So I hold back any outright laughter. She looks down and moves away, "You have plenty of grunts. I'm just filling in."

"Grunt temping."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Depends how stupid it is."

"Why do you keep giving me exits?" I don't keep giving her exits. Unless you count imminent death. That's an exit, I suppose. But no, she's wrong. I'm completely barring the door against her leaving in any other way. Odd might be seeing exits, but if she were actually to test any of those doors she would find them very much locked. I am shaking my head and she sees it. "You do. Last night you told me you'd let me live. This morning you let me go running off to Baker Street on my own. Now you're asking if I want to be one of your grunts."

"No, I asked if that's what you thought you were doing. It's a different thing altogether."

"Would you rather I lived, Jim?"

"Why would I be plotting your horrible-yet-deservingly-clever murder if I'd rather you lived?"

"Admit it, you don't hate me."

"I hate you with the fire of a thousand suns, darling."

"You quite like having me around."

"I will powerhose the whole flat with bleach when you live."

"You think I'm actually not bad, actually, as live-in-ones go."

"Give me that bloody address over here."

She hands it over and, without so much as a by-your-leave, starts making tea in my kitchen. Deal with that later. For now, I have a slip of paper in my hand and I'm trying to get my brain going again. Used to be, before that marathon session as Rich Brooke, I could have looked at the letters on the page and known what was going to happen. This afternoon, it's taking just a little bit longer.

And y'know, I really don't like the fact that she went and got it for me. I wish I'd got myself off the sofa and at least gone with her.

What do I want? I want Sherlock back in the game. What do I have? I have John Watson's address. How does this help me? This helps me because Watson is my most likely remaining candidate on the list of people who might know where Sherlock is.

It's not much, really, is it? Lots of ifs-buts-and-maybes. But it's all I have. Now. How do I use what I have and how it helps me to get what I want?

"You go over there," says Odd, putting down a coffee at my elbow, "And in your own inimitable way, you make the doughy fucker tell you what he knows."

"Lovely. Very precise. Good planning."

"Don't be sarcastic. Why wouldn't you?"

Because of _fucking_ Molly Hooper, that's why, but damned if I'm going to say that out loud to the demon child across the table. Because she treated me like I was useless. And I didn't do anything about it, which means I'm useless. And Odd had to fecking save me, which means I'm worse than _useless_. Because what if I can't do it. What if, when it's not Sherlock, when I'm bored and not properly engaged, what if I've lost my touch? What if I'm no good at it anymore?

I just want to stress, I haven't said any of this out loud.

So why is Odd looking at me like I'm a puppy about to kick it in front of her?

"Come on. Good suit and a stiff drink, what can't you do?"

"I don't _need_ a stiff drink."

"Of course you don't. Come on. Break out the Westwood, we'll get him this afternoon. You could be back in the game by the weekend."

Oh, she shouldn't have said that. Oh, _Jesus_ she shouldn't have said that. I know she thinks she's helping but she really, really shouldn't have said that. My stomach turns over on itself, my heart starts doing four-to-the-floor. The hangover covers for the shaking, but that's just an excuse. The weekend. That's really close. I'm not even properly awake yet. I can't be back in the game, Sherlock can't be drawn back by the weekend, it's not right, it's not fair, I'm not ready, I need a week in the bloody gym to start with, never mind the rest, I can't be-

"I've panicked you. What's the matter? What did I say?"

"No, no, no, there's no panicking to be done. It's just…Well, it's a bit boring. Intimidating a doctor. Can do that any time. It's grunt work- and no, before you even ask, I don't want you to go. I don't want you anywhere near it."

"He knows me anyway. So what do you intend to do?"

"We need a double agent. Somebody who can get in, get him to tell all, and get out again unscathed. Somebody with irresistible personal allure, blinding personality. The kind of person you wouldn't,_ couldn't_ kick out of your flat once they were in. The kind of agent you find yourself opening up to, whether you're aware of it or not, and enjoying it. Thinking it's all to the good."

"You're talking about the perfect spy, Uncle Jim."

"I know."

"But I thought you said you didn't want me anywhere near this?" She's not funny. I make sure she knows it's not funny. "So who do you have in mind? Cleo deKate?"

"Stop that!" She keeps saying the names of my contacts. And they're usually appropriate too. I'm really, really not used to the fact that she even knows them , though. Last night when we were pissed she was talking about a poison chemist from Syria like she knew the fucker. It's alright when we're pissed, but I need her to stop it now. "Anyway, Cleo's in San Francisco, Diego, some kind of saint-"

"Oh, that's right, she's doing a play-"

"I'm warning you now, honey; I have to kill you, that's a necessity, but eating your heart would be a delicious extraneous desecration.-"

"Understood."

"-No, anyway, the true candidate is much, much closer to home."

Twining her sweet, fuzzy way around my legs, just at this moment.

Sherly and I have plans, you see. Even in the depths of my stupid stupor the last few weeks, Sherly and I were making plans. Whether I was aware of her or not, she was in by the bed, nuzzling my hand, making me think of her even after I thought I'd kicked her out. Even then, she was sticking by me. This one simple task, she'll take on gladly.

"I'm a well-off, educated gentleman, so I'm going to stay here and play with listening devices and veterinary surgery. You're a horrible street ruffian, so go and catch me an urban fox. Nastier the better. With scars and big claws. And loads of teeth."

"…Excuse me?"

[A/N - The darkly endearing tale of Sherly's mission is told by John Watson in the story 'Cat and Mouse' by the same author. Said story runs side-by-side with these last few chapters of this. It's not necessary to read it, I just don't want you thinking Sherly just disappears. Sherly has the time of her nine lives. Hearts, Sal.]


	15. The Last Supper

The set-up for Sherly's explosive entrance into the life of John Watson was necessarily dramatic and overblown. Couldn't afford for him to refuse her. Everything had to be perfect. Irresistible. And Sherly's my girl, so I went and I took care of that myself. Never have I been so aware of asking so much of someone than I was as I released that fox beneath the good doctor's window. Well, no, that's a lie. I've done it, yes, and I've been aware of it, but I've never been asking anybody I really cared about at all. That's what I mean. And even when everything went so beautifully and her safe lodgings were virtually assured, it was still with a heavy heart that I left Sherly behind and made my lonely way back to the flat.

I feel like a traitor, y'know? Like I've taken the one person who loves and respects you, who not only trusts you to provide water and Whiskas and a warm blanket in the bottom of the bath on the winter nights but sometimes cuddles up against you in return, and given them over to some grave mortal enemy. I miss her already. I had thought the walk might clear my head, and I had thought, determinedly, repeatedly, 'It's only a cat', forced myself to think that, but it can't make it stick.

Who will be there waiting when I get home? Who will be mewling quietly in the corner as I fall asleep? Who will wake me with a friendly paw come the morning?

But as I turn the corner, and see the blue police lights flashing over the front of the building, I think, 'Oh yeah. That's right.'

Sherly's a lot less fecking trouble.

I'm not ashamed to tell you that I approach my own home with my collar turned up and my head tucked in. This isn't the night for it. I had cops trying to crawl up my arse this morning and I still haven't given Sebastian anything that one might exactly term an 'apology'. That's what he's demanding. An apology. He's making _demands_ of me, and those demands are for regret, for guilt, for_ emotion_, the sad fecking bastard. He can haul me up in front of Jeremy Kyle if he wants to get into that shite. Anyway, the upshot is, I still don't have a definite alibi for last night. That's why I sneak in.

Through the blue lights, past cops, across the lobby. Stairs, not lift. This physique doesn't keep itself up, you know. It may look effortless but please, don't be fooled. I work hard to maintain my special, distinguished appeal. Also, the lift didn't come when I called it. Everything's always fecking broke.

So, three floors down from the penthouse, one is understandably out of breath (in the back of my mind, clear as a klaxon and scathingly honest, "It's a six storey building, Uncle Jim.") Amongst all the huffing and puffing, a breath of air different from all the rest. Not smelling like the lemony stuff the cleaning lady uses on the stairs, not smelling like the good thick carpets on the landing or the dust in the air conditioning vents or even like the light sheen of sweat on my own forehead. Smelling like twenty years ago. Smelling like the darker end of a very sorry street indeed in a piss-poor corner of a clawing vine of a suburb just managing to attach itself to Dublin. Smelling it drag me up the stairs with something that might almost be anticipation. Even, maybe, excitement. Smelling schoolbooks. Smelling mud because I'd had my nose ground in it and smelling purple foxgloves because I'd crushed them up and hid them in the little fucker's jam piece and nasty little bastards threw up for a week and they called the priest out and everything.

Smelling it right to my own door.

She's made stew.

When I let myself in, Odbody is hooked worriedly over a great big pot I didn't know I owned on the stove, sniffing warily at it. She has and all, she's made stew, that smells like my mother's only better. Odd has seasoned hers with salt and pepper, not cigarette ash and plastic fingernails and bile.

A not-inconsiderable chunk of my psyche, a percentile somewhere in the eighties, I'd say, is twelve years old, thinking about the cool, wet exterior of the pint bottle of milk in the fridge. That had been intended for Sherly, but with stew in a bowl and milk in a glass bottle, all things might be made amenable. That part of me needs to rush straight over there and make sure it's been done right, and do so right away, and pass judgement with a spoon already in hand.

The rest of me manages just enough control to tell it, "Play it cool, Jim, play it cool…"

"Keeping busy, I see…"

"Yeah, well, you didn't have dinner. And I thought you'd be… with Sherly gone and everything… you might have been… How'd she get on?"

"She's a superstar, Odd-"

"Yeah, I know."

"-She's never been anything else-"

"Okay."

"Why would she have been anything different tonight?"

"Sorry."

In all of this, I am re-establishing my authority. That's my kitchen she's in. It's my cat we're discussing. This is my home and my life and the terrible power of _my_ nostalgia she's toying with. Get it right, young lady; there are yet details of your death which could go easy or hard for you. Get this right and I might even put you to sleep first. In all of this, I am carefully, nonchalantly, seating myself at the breakfast bar. "I see the cops are back anyway."

"They haven't come back up here." They will if they smell your cooking. "I hope you don't mind, but I called Colonel Moran. Everything's okay now, he says he'll back you up about last night." Actually, I do mind. Just a little bit. Any other night I would mind enough that you'd have the phone halfway down your throat by now. I'm sure Sebastian minded too, or did, at least, before you said whatever you said to him. I'll get another fucking earful over that, my lovely, just you see if I don't. But the thing is, pigeon, sparrow, turtledove, you've got the lid off the pot and the ladle in your hand and it's really more important that I point out to you where the bowls are. Getting my priorities straight, y'know?

And from there on out, not a word is spoken for a long, long time. At first, I am carefully testing her offering. Then I am wholeheartedly stuffing my face. Odd eats too, but less and more cautiously. And then there's silence because I know what that means, and I stop.

Eventually, "Oh, you evil little bitch. Of all the shitty, _shitty_ things to do-"

"What?" Eyes wide, mouth open, making a mockery of alarm, "What have I done?"

"You know exactly what you've done, y'_malicious_ little bitch. You're the lowest of the low. I know why you're here; the devil didn't want the likes of you hanging around hell-"

"Please calm down. What do you think I've done?"

"…You mean you haven't poisoned it? You haven't snared me in fine lines, like fishing wire, of desire and memory, of those tenuous scraps of normality and-" and Odbody is shaking her head, ponytail bobbing behind her. Looking first lost, then offended, then laughing at me. She hasn't. I'm not about to die. I haven't been eating foxglove or rat poison or anything else horrible. Just tasty, tasty stew.

The silence picks up where it left off because I pick up too. Pick up the spoon and go back to it.

New question, then; if she's not waiting for me to collapse across the table foaming at the mouth, what the hell _is_ the matter with her? Odd looks barely present, mind and appetite elsewhere.

It's not much of a question. Once I get past the distractions of my own hunger and greed, and once she has graciously provided my second serving, it's really pretty obvious.

Odbody is all out of cards. Molly Hooper was a bust, there's nothing to do but wait for Doctor Watson, and she has fulfilled the task she set herself about getting me back on my feet. What else has Odd to offer?

What do I want? I want Sherlock back in the game. What do I have? I have Odd, and Odd has nothing more to distract me with. How does that help me?

Because I have been considering her, I have been looking at her. She raises her brow now, inviting me to speak. I nod to her and say, "Yes." She nods back. "Tomorrow. Honestly, love, some Scheherazade you turned out to be."

"I know. I'm a terrible fucking disappointment. It's always been that way."

"You make a very good bowl of stew." As far as she can, over the table, she bows. "So now that we're here, you have to tell me you're real name."

"No."

"…Favourite colour, then."

"Gold."

"Favourite book."

"_Invisible Monsters_."

"Favourite film."

"_Monty Python's Meaning Of Life._"

I nod, wisely. "Good, solid choice. Wrong, though."

"It's personal opinion, there's no such thing as-"

"There is so. I mean, it may be a great film, but compared to the greatest film of all time it's six public schoolboys farting on a piece of celluloid-"

"_Heresy_!"

"I'm not the heretic here, angel."

"…You're going to say _Saturday Night Fever_, aren't you?"

"Greatest film ever made."

"I've never seen it."

I tell her to pick a bottle of wine out of the rack while I find a TV I haven't beaten to death yet and drag it through to the living room. I cannot, in good conscience, kill with my own hands one who has not had this last and most exquisite pleasure.

And there is hope for her, you know, or there would have been. She knows the difference between a laugh-out-loud moment and the moment to smile wryly. When she can no longer control the urge to dance, her silent bobbing is just on the appreciative side of unobtrusive. She cries, freely and openly, when Tony and Stephanie finally kiss, and folds traumatized into herself throughout the rest of that hellish night.

She, like all true fans, quits before the end, leaves everything hanging without that terrible tag-on happy ending, falling asleep on the arm of the sofa.

I start to move, ready to leave her there, but she feels it and stirs. "Wait. Jim-"

"Things to do, angel."

"-But can I go in the morning and say goodbye to somebody? It's not anybody important and I won't say anything that'll get me missed. Just somebody I want to see again before-"

"Yeah," I tell her, "Of course."

Whoever she wants. How can I refuse her that?

Thus satisfied, she coils up tighter in her little corner and slips off again.

And as for me, I go to the computer. Bit of work to do, before tomorrow. Bit of research, bit of digging, bit of homework…

Fuck it. Yeah. _Detection_.


	16. The Vauxhall Cross

A little after seven the next morning, she leaves. Which is a bit early, isn't it? If it was my last day on Earth I'd be having a lie in. I'm not sure there are that many places in London to go swimming with dolphins. Can't see the Taj Mahal and be back for dinner. So where the hell is she going? Who does she have to see at seven in the fecking morning? Not me, certainly. You'd never find me at seven in the morning. I am where sensible people who've had the intelligence to get out of the rat-race can be found at seven in the morning; in a warm pit of white cotton, humming along with the radio while the worst of the hangover ebbs away. Not _out_. In the _world_. _Eugh_…

Well, I am _this morning_, obviously. Have to find out what this is about, couldn't let this slide. But I'm not _liking_ it, I want that to be known.

And yes, fine, I was awake when she went out. That's how I know, as all you smart-arse, Holmes-loving believer shower of bastards out there have put together by now, that she left.

Oh, what's that? You hadn't put that together? That didn't occur to you until I said it just there now? Well, I must say, I'm shocked. I'm downright flabbergasted. All you great, intelligent people who knew him well enough to claim allegiance to him, not a one of you even bloody thought of that? Haven't had your Weetabix this morning, have you?

See, I've been putting lots of things together.

That's what I've been doing. That's why I was awake; I've been up putting things together. Up all night, matter of fact. It was a bit different to my usual work, little bit interesting, little bit sexy. I know a few new things now. And when you know things you feel more comfortable proceeding with actions.

See? You don't know him like I know him, alright? I Know Him So Well, alright? I've been there, I've lived it. I understand that life from the inside, now.

That's why I'm following, and why I'm able to follow.

Odd never expected me to follow her. She's been spying on me all these weeks, months maybe. She thinks she knows me. Odd thinks I'm asleep and dreaming right now. Thinks she's the only one who's learned how to sneak about, how to blend in.

And bloody hell, can she manage that, I keep fecking _losing_ her, and that's just in the morning crowds. Give me a break, I don't _do_ this all the time. I have people who do this for me. I have better things to think about than keeping a good distance and maintaining visual contact. Like the fact that she brushed her hair before she went out. Not just the way she's done since I met her, quick, efficient, get it done, but took her time. She's wearing eyeliner, and I don't even know where she found that because it's certainly not mine. You get a lot of that with the Cbeebies lads, but not me. Sam and Mark can do what they will, but I'm not going to parade that in front of the kids. Not to mention, I have to live with those repeats. I never went in for any of that teeth-and-tan stuff.

I didn't.

Stop that. I can find you, y'know. Sitting out there in your fecking bedrooms at Mummy and Daddy's house with your little laptops or your cousin's big old hand-me-down desktop, getting all excited about_ gifs_ and _video leaks_, wetting yourselves for scraps about some fecking TV show which doesn't mean anything and you're not going to know anything about it when it comes on, I can _find you_, that's my point. You could all find yourselves locked in dodgy old Liverpool tanning booths. I'll have rooms and rooms and rooms of you and the rooms will be soundproof. Not to keep people from finding you, oh no. No, I will be keeping your screaming for myself.

Shite, stop thinking about the screaming, follow the girl, where the fuck's she gone?

Tube.

Stairs down to the Tube.

Don't make me go on the Tube in the morning, oh _God_, please don't make me go on the Tube in the morning. It'll be full of people who are workers or students and have to commute. Bad, evil, stupid, normal, cattle-like, lemmingy, useless, worthless fecking people, don't make me go on the Tube. She knows I'm here, doesn't she? That's why she's doing this, isn't it? She knows I'm here and she knows this is my one real weakness. She's trying to leave me behind.

Yeah, well she's got another bloody thing coming. I'm going on the bloody Tube.

I find a seat, and there are still plenty this early in the morning, but Odd stands, hanging on a wrist strap. She plants the heel of her shoe down and lets her momentum swing her around.

Beneath her jeans, she's wearing the sparkly shoes again. The wrap up whore shoes she was wearing in Brighton. She's wearing a little black jacket with half-length sleeves I haven't seen before. Who's she all dressed up for?

No, better question, more insightful question, who makes her so nervous?

Odd's not dressed up to look good for somebody. She's dressed up to make an impression. Like Brighton. Like Georgie the Flower Girl, who she knew would drive me to ground where she could sneak up on me, like the Darling Wreck who she knew wouldn't interest me enough to look at, like when she revealed herself in the chip shop, stripped down, not pretending anything, trustworthy. She tailors herself, day to day, creates herself depending on who she needs to be. So who needs a girl who takes care of herself? Who can run in heels? Who, as I learn when she steps off the train and delicately spritzes herself, wears perfume?

This isn't my Odd, this is somebody else's. Somebody who needs her to be nervous and strong.

That's a talent. If mine is to understand how people will react and Sherlock's was to turn the facts into the story, if Adler's was to give people what they want, this is Odd's. She can be whatever is necessary.

I wish I hadn't met her yet. I wish she'd had a few more years, a bit of experience. I wish she'd had time to find out what side she really wanted to be on, what exactly she wanted to get out of her life and her talents. I wish she'd waited until she had some kind of core Odd figured out. When she knew herself, properly understood, that was when she and I should have met. We could have had some fun, her and me, one way or the other.

Please, please, just let her run.

If she turns and spots me and decides it's not worth it, if she takes off on her stilettos and vanishes round a corner, I'll let her.

Tell her I'll see her when she's ready for me and, do you know what? I'll look forward to it. It'll be a hell of a game, when it comes.

Please just let her run.

She doesn't though. I follow her up streets and down steps, and in the end, across Vauxhall Bridge.

Do I _look_ like I go south of the river?

Do I look like I go anywhere near Vauxhall bloody Cross? There are men at Vauxhall Cross who would eat my heart with HP sauce. Not out of hatred, you understand. No, no, to gain my strength.

And who would Odbody know down near Vauxhall Cross?

Around the road from the SIS building. A fair bit away, but still walking distance. Down a narrow side-street. A dark little window, and beyond it a dark little café.

A dark eyed woman waiting. No Blackberry, for once in her life. Just a coffee, which is very likely dark and bitter. Christ, she has a name, doesn't she… She has a name, which I know, but I forget, because it's not her real name. She doesn't know Odd. You can tell by the way she looks up. But she's stuck in the booth and it's easier for her to listen than to put up any kind of resistance.

I can't get any closer.

I don't know if I'd be able to hear anything, even if I was standing next to them. I might, very slightly, be in shock.

That woman, the one warming to Odd moment by moment, Blackberry girl, I've seen her before. She'd be standing in the doorway when Mycroft Holmes was coming in for our little chats. He'd leave her outside, but she'd still be there when he went out.

_Anthea_, fuck, thank you, _that's_ the name. Anthea.

Terrible girl. What does she want with Anthea? Why was this her last request?

'Last', by the way. I said 'last' just now. Maybe ten minutes ago I wouldn't have said that, but that's what I said just now. She hasn't changed, I haven't changed. Nothing's changed, really. We knew this from the start, Odd and I.

She told me that joke, y'know.

About the old Indian who finds the snake frozen in the snow. He takes it in and he puts it next to the fire and he thaws it out and feeds it chicken soup, and the snake gets better. And then it bites him, and the Indian says 'What the fuck, hissy?' And the snake shrugs and says, 'You knew I was a fucking snake.'

Odd told me that joke, and I thought it was too obvious to take her seriously.

We all make mistakes, sometimes.


	17. A Cat May Look At A King

Odd got a cab. I let her. And I didn't take the Tube again either, so it's afternoon by the time I get back to the flat. She's on the sofa on her belly; I only know this because her feet, still in heels, are hanging over the arm. As I stand there in the doorway, a hand reaches out to a bag of M&Ms torn open on the coffee table.

"Comfort eating, dear?"

"Well, what am I watching my figure for?" I edge past, and the hand lifts up the bag in offering. I take a couple, out of politeness. Alright, a handful. But it's not comfort eating. It's a sugar boost after a long walk, it's not comfort eating. "What kept you, anyway?"

A blatant lie; "I went for lunch. Thought I'd give you the afternoon to yourself. Did you see your friend this morning, then?"

"Cut the bullshit," she snaps, "You know I did." So Odd knows I followed her. Told you she put me on that Tube on purpose, petty little bitch. "Anyway, I never said 'friend'. I said I had somebody I wanted to see ag-"

"That's enough crap from you and all, thank you." Over the arm of the sofa, her eyes cut up, just once, just checking. For my own good, I suppose; making sure I'm not going to kill her here and now where it would be a bad idea. But I'm not. There's no anger in me for her. This in itself is strange enough, given the circumstances. Even worse is the fact that I'm about to ask her a question, and I'm willing to listen if she gives the right answer. "Why that, Odd? Why go to her, of all people?"

Odd doesn't answer right away and I wish she would. I wish she'd have something prepared. I'm not picky, y'know, I'll take excuses. I have no problem with excuses, provided they're feasible. What she does instead is start to pick herself up from the sofa, stretching out her back, fingers flexing, rolling her neck until it cracks, apparently ignoring me entirely.

Fuck me, I miss Sherly…

"Tea or coffee?" she says.

"What'd you have with Anthea?"

"Tea."

"If it's good enough for her…"

She fills the kettle and sits on the corner of the worktop while she waits for it. "Anthea gets it. I didn't tell her anything, I promise but… Well, I told her my name, but that's all, and-"

"No, wait. Why her? Why tell her your name?"

"Because she gets it. Her and me are nearly, like… Like if I went on, I'd be somebody's Anthea and I'd never really spoken to her and I wanted to." She shrugs, and that's it. That's it, but I wait for her to say something else. She's smarter than this. I know she is. She can do better than this. This isn't even a proper excuse or an explanation. This does nothing. That's how I know she's telling the truth. Because it doesn't matter. "I swear to God, we had tea and we talked about the weather-"

"-And you told her your name."

"She asked for it."

"_I_ asked for it."

"Grow up, it's not the same thing at all."

At which, the kettle clicks off, and everything stops for a minute or two while she makes the tea, heel clicks her way over and puts one down in front of me. At which I realize nobody's made me tea in a very long time who wasn't wearing an apron and a stupid little cap. At which I _know_ she's smarter than this, that this can't be all there is. "You almost had me going there, angel…"

"Here it bloody comes…"

"Nah, you knew I was following. You _chose_ her because I was following. Like I was going to curl up in a little ball and cry and say, 'Ooh, she's friend with Mycroft, best take off out of town and ne'er return...' Nice try, Ginger, very nice. No cigar, though-"

"How thick do you think I am? Jesus, there's stupid bloody ideas and then there's-"

"Then what?" A bit louder, maybe, than I would have liked. I should be careful of that. Don't want her thinking I give a flying fuck what she was up to. She's got about ten hours before it ceases entirely to matter, but I just _don't_ like being lied to. Not at this late stage in the game anyway. "Explain it to me. And, like you said, love, no shite."

"Woke you up, didn't it?"

"…Beg pardon?"

"Come on, Uncle Jim. Think about it. The first night we met you were ready to strangle me on the floor of a chicken shop. That, obviously, wasn't feasible, but you promised me no less than four times that night that I wouldn't live to see the week out. But you've been losing your nerve a little bit, haven't you? Think of all the chances, all the opportunities, all the threats and promises and all the… _inventive_ little ideas you've had about it and what have you actually done? You knew as soon as I got back from Baker Street yesterday that I had no more to offer you. And yet here I stand still. If I had gone to Anthea to tell her your current name, address and national insurance number, Mycroft's boys would have been waiting on this sofa, not me. Fucking get it together, that's all I'm saying."

Kind of her. Really. Doing all of this for me, is she? Still all part of her masterplan? How generous, how very selfless and self-sacrificing of her, to lay down her life that mine might be put back on track. Without a thought for herself.

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world to live in if it worked that way…

She got vicious during her little rant. Wound herself up. She suits vicious, as a look. It furrows up her face, pulls her shoulders back, makes her look proud and contemptuous. Makes you almost, just almost, not notice the little finger tapping convulsively at the side of her mug, the little tremor in the calf that betrays her shaking. Charitable, caring Odd, getting nothing out of this but my happiness and improved lifestyle. Bless her heart.

"Your real name," I say, as she raises the mug to her lips, "is Melanie Chambray."

Odd stands, still shaking and still with that same quiet hate, and leaves the room. Slams herself, by the sounds of things, in the spare room, but I don't get up to follow.

These are the things I learned last night. Remember? I stayed up, doing research. Being, sickeningly, a detective. Putting together the facts I had and letting them lead me to the ones I didn't. Odd speaks French, talks posh and probably isn't eighteen, which means she definitely wasn't eighteen when she was on the streets. She said she'd been sleeping in that alley for years. Smart posh girl runs away from home. In the end, she wasn't all that difficult to find. Her father is Jean-Luc Chambray, an executive in some massive big pharmaceutical company. Mother English, blue blood. Little Melanie did a bunk from a Surrey boarding school aged fifteen and decided to do it her way in London.

There's quite the reward for finding Melanie Chambray, y'know. A less well-off gentleman with fewer principles than myself might be tempted. I, however, am not. I _was_, and then I weighed up the considerable remuneration against the emotional and psychological fun to be had from the inevitable media circus surrounding her death and the things that may, in the wake of it, be discovered about the poor little rich girl.

For instance, she's been picking pockets clean across every borough, roughly since she started keeping up with myself and His Majesty, Crowned In Curls. Seems we're an expensive habit. She's wanted with a vengeance by the managers of nineteen different two- and three-star hotels who have bills for her under four different names, including Georgina Fleur and, my personal favourite of her known aliases, Joan Holmes.

Y'hear that, lanky? Does that make its way through all that hair and in an ear? Even Odbody's got you figured.

Oh, of course, I'm still calling her Odbody. All those other names are other people's names for her. My name for her is Odd.

Melanie 'Odd' Chambray came to me to be killed. This is why she left the room; she knew this is where I was going with the story. I don't know, maybe she'd seen me shoot myself and Sherlock jump off a building and both of us surviving and decided the only sure way was to get help. Maybe, and this is the theory I prefer, it's a case of waste-not-want-not. If Odd has to die, and she's sure she does, it might as well be a useful death. Her coming to sort me out was like anybody else writing a will. Putting her affairs in order. She has nothing to bequeath except what she knows, and she knew enough to haul me out of bed and back to work.

She's scratched my back. Now she's getting impatient to be paid. Selfish old Uncle Jim, not spotting that until just now. Jesus, I can be a callous bastard sometimes.

About tea time, I knock on the door of the spare room. This time she really was sleeping. Takes her a second to get up, and when she does she forgets about her shoes and turns her ankle, hobbles clacking to the door.

"It's still light outside, surely it's not-"

"No, not yet. What do you want to do for dinner?"

"It's not Death Row, Jim, you don't have to-"

"I know, but-"

"I finished the M I'm not that hungry."

This goes back and forth for another little while, all this mock politeness, trying to be civil about things, until eventually she admits that she doesn't want any messy evacuations as part of her inevitable crime scene and I tell her I don't want any screaming when it hurts and she can't take the diazepam on an empty stomach. Once we come out and get honest with each other, she becomes much more agreeable. This, apparently, is my show to run and I can direct her how I will. "So let's just do pizza or something, then." She says. Which is fine.

She's bad for me, y'know. What have I eaten since I met her that hasn't been fried or processed or out of a packet? Except the stew, of course. The stew which, bless her heart, wasn't poisoned. Have to get her to write down her recipe before we go.

Shaking off sleep, she announces she's going for a shower while we wait. Getting ready for it. She wants the scene to be right, come the time. I understand that, I knew she'd want it to be pretty. I've got it all figured out in my head, how to make it pretty for her. "You don't need me dressed up or looking like anything, do you?"

"No, angel. However you please. What do you want on the pizza, though?"

"Meat feast, extra mushrooms."

"…Are you just saying that because you know what I-"

"Doesn't matter, it's what I want."

Whatever she wants. All because the lady loves.

I told you at the start, didn't I? I said it, she'd have to have a death wish to mess me about the way she did. And that night on the front in Brighton, not four feet from crashing surf, she told me she wouldn't mind drowning. She giggled when I strangled her. Trust me; think about it this way. It's so much easier to take when you look at it from her point of view.

I set out the two wine glasses and the three little blue pills for her. Somewhere between the delivery boy arriving at the door and me turning back she has slipped silently out of the bathroom. Same shoes again. There's probably a story for why, but I never did get round to asking. Tight black jeans, black sack of a jumper, she lifts up her eyes but not her head and says, "Will I do?" I tell her she'd be better with her hair up off her neck. She ties it as she takes her seat at the table. Already doing it, _then_ she asks why.

"Because of this," and I take the razor from my pocket and put it on the table. She picks it up and studies it like a collector with a rare butterfly, all but glowing, tracing the line, folding the fine cut-throat blade out of the mother-of-pearl handle. Knew she'd like it. I saw that coming back from Vauxhall Cross and it made sense.

"It's gorgeous," she says. "You're sure you don't mind getting rid of it?"

"I was going to give it to you anyway if you'd decided to just go."

"That's really nice of you. Thanks." She hands it back to me, then points at the pills. "I'm only taking two of these now. I'll have the other on the way, but otherwise you're going to have to lift me and it'll look bad." Then, thoughtfully, "Are we taking the Jag or the cab?"

"Cab. Attracts less attention."

"…You know who else drives a Jag and a cab?"

"I swear to God, princess, if you say Noel Edmonds' name to me, I'll-" I'm into it, pointing a finger, searching my mind for the appropriate threat. Slowly, very gently, her small little smile spreads out across her face and breaks into a grin. A second later she's folded giggling over the table, struggling to breathe. "I'm _serious_, though. Moran found out about that in The Sun years ago and ever since, every time I take the cab out, however nasty or serious I'm trying to be I keep thinking about Mr fucking Blobby." Which sends her into a fresh gale, "Aw, Jesus, love, it's not funny. Like, I had Sherlock in the back of the cab once, right? Had it all worked out, _gorgeous_ fucking bit of business. I wanted to listen. I wanted to pay attention, wanted to burn that on my _fucking_ mind to drag out on long rotten rainy days and relive. Do you know, my dear, precisely what I remember of those few short and, I'm sure, very beautiful minutes?"

"What?"

"The theme tune from _Noel's_ fucking _House Party_, bar for bar."

She looks at me, and knows if she laughs again it'll be hurtful this time. So she forcefully straightens her face and chokes out, "Colonel Moran's not coming, is he?"

"Nah, just me and you, kid."

"Thank you."

"…Do you want me to tell you-"

"I think I know, actually."

"Bollocks you do!" Odd giggles but it's not on, I'm not having it. We're talking, of course, about the scene of the crime and I'm sorry, but I haven't told her anything and I'm proud of where I thought of and I don't think she got there first. I tell her so. I tell her so outright and with more fucking expletives than I just used there.

"Give me a bit of paper," she says, "And I'll write down where I think. I'll leave it here. That way I don't have to steal your thunder until after I'm dead."

"Agreeable. Properly genteel." I find her a pen and she tears a bit off the pizza box, writes something in small, careful block capitals, "Can't believe you. Can't fucking believe the way you get on sometimes. It's a wonder somebody hasn't bumped you off _long_ before now, the way you rub people up…" She puts the card face down on the table, tucking the edge under the wine bottle. "Bitch."

Peaceful, calm quiet, until the last slice of pizza, the second little pill. Already riding the first one, she swallows it down and says to me, "I know you've probably figured it out, but will you hear my confession before I get too out of it?"

"'Course I will."

"The junkie. The hopeless fucking skaghead, the one they buried in Sherlock's grave. He was my friend. And you were right, I did fix the dose. And then when he was wobbling I fucking shoved him. Nobody asked me to, but it worked out nicely. And I thought it would be okay. I thought I'd be okay. And I would have been okay. But Holmes had me figured, from minute one he knew it was me and he just… He just didn't _care_. He knew what I'd done but it was like it didn't _mean_ anything. So then I wasn't okay anymore. So I'm not okay."

I could be cruel. I could ask her just what she expected from Holmes. I could ask her if she doesn't think he probably had a plan of his own to get a surrogate body. I could ask her if she couldn't just have learned her lesson about interfering after that.

I don't, though.

I get up, and I offer her my hand to keep her steady on the way to the lift.

"By the way," she says, leaning on my shoulder, "The cops were downstairs when I came in this morning. That guy's out of intensive care. Whatever it is? It's not murder."


	18. Afterward

_Moran wakes early. It's an army leftover, a habit he never could shake. And with so little else to do of an early morning, he walks down the street for the paper._

_ Takes one look at the headlines and the picture beneath and groans, "Fuck's sake…" Between the corner shop and his own front door he takes his phone from his pocket and dials. The one number he never saved and the one number which, to his dismay, he knows by heart. And as ever, this time of the morning, he waits a long lot of rings for the answer._

_ "Hello?"_

_ "James. And how do I find you this fine morning?"_

_ "…Okay. I'm having stew. You should come over."_

_ "It's half-seven."_

_ "It's third day stew, it's going to turn very soon."_

_ "You haven't seen a paper, by any chance, have you?"_

_ "No, Sebastian, the lights are off."_

_ "Well, get on a fucking computer and look at the front page, would you?"_

_ "Which paper?"_

_ "Any of them."_

_ "…You sound really angry, Sebastian, are you alright?"_

_ "Sweet Jesus Christ," he mutters. Hangs up and kicks in the lock of his own door. That fucking idiot can't just take a bloody holiday, can he? Cops are going to have a fucking field day…_

* * *

><p><em>Lestrade got the call in the earliest of hours. And he hates the earliest of hours because that means the hacks are all out to get a front page before the presses have gone too far to change it. Get a call about four in the morning, it's not so bad. You've got til the lunchtime news if they call at four in the morning. But as it was, Christ, the journos were there before he was.<em>

_ The journos were wishing they weren't there before he was._

_ Her wrists had been tied to the parted branches of a tree, ankles lashed to the trunk. Hanging forward so that, when her throat was cut, the blood fell not on her, but squarely on the ground beneath her. Ground where the grass was just starting to grow back. Where the splatter had jumped up and caught on the engraved letters of a headstone._

_ The overall effect one of crucifixion, of sacrifice. _

_ He approached, because he had to, because it's his job. Getting closer, noticed something where the victim's baggy sweater hung away from her body, and with the end of a pen lifted up the hem to look._

_ In black biro, something written between the base of her ribs and her navel. Large letters, right way up, meant to be read._

_ 'Bored now,' it said. 'Come and play'._

_ He dropped the hem again, tried to act as though he'd seen nothing at all. Cast an eye over the journalists, prowling like jackals but in the same sleepy haze as he had been until just a minute ago. Only cautiously did he leave them behind. Pulled out a phone, dialled a number he was told, once, to memorize._

_ Yawning, confused, "Hello?"_

_ "Molly, you're not working the graveyard shift by any chance, are you?"_

_ "No."_

_ "You are now."_

_ "No, I can't, I've got-"_

_ "It has to be you, Molly."_

_ "…Oh."_

* * *

><p><em>Her morning ritual. Tea in the café. Danish pastry, her one daily weakness, her present to herself. A newspaper someone else has left behind on the table. Her phone put away and begged not to ring. One lone half-hour of simply Anthea, before Mycroft's car arrives, before perfection, before Everything In Its Place.<em>

_ She casts her eyes about, as she walks in. Trying to spot that abandoned paper, as usual, but trying too to spot that girl. No reason why. Just that she was there yesterday, had never been there before. Was so strange. Something about her hunted and arresting. She said her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth King. Said it as though it meant something to her, as though it was all she had, something she held very, very dear. Anthea understood. Anthea knew what that was, to cling to the intimate, the personal._

_ The naming of cats, she thinks, not quite knowing why, is a curious thing. _

_ And she can't remember the rest exactly, but it's something about cats having three names. Two of these names are known. One is known only to the cat._

_ With that same sing-song, nursery rhyme tone in her head, she unfolds the paper. _

_ Reaches for the Blackberry. Not begrudging, not thinking. And it's too early, so when Mycroft answers he knows from the click of the line connecting that something is wrong. Something too big to ignore or to delegate. Something private. Something intimate. The late, last name._

_John hears it from Hudson. After his fresh brush with the press earlier in the week, he's been avoiding the papers, keeping the television off. But she calls to ask what he knows, and he knows nothing. That won't do. That's not right._

_ His cab arrives at St Bart's a moment after the unmarked police car, ten seconds ahead of Mycroft's chauffeur. _

_ Rubbing sleep from her eyes, eating a sandwich, Molly is waiting for them all in the morgue. As is the body on the slab._

_ And when they are gathered, she rolls back the sheet, as if for an identification. "Before I even start," she says, "Who here has seen this girl before?"_

_ Each of them, distantly, remembering, mutters a different name. _

_ Lestrade rolls his eyes, "Oh, this case is going to be great fun to untangle."_

* * *

><p><em>Of course, one of those journalists got to the body in between Lestrade and the scenes of crime team. Did what the detective had done and lifted the edge of the sweater.<em>

_ Come and play._

_ Jim Moriarty did not fecking write that. _

_ That's why he laughs._

_ There's a piece of pizza box propped up on his windowsill. 'Sherlock's grave', it says. She knew, of course she knew. She had it picked out before he did. He had been going to keep it. This, though, this in the paper, that got dear Sebastian so riled up, this is a game changer. _

_ 'Come and play'. Fuck's sake, angel._

_ Molly Hooper, Gregory Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, John Hamish Cat-Stealer Watson, come and play._

_ Sherlock, dear, darling, sweetie, Daddy Long-Legs, come and play._

_ He could have done with a day off, like. Twenty-four hours to get his head in gear. Christ, now he has to move. But his ma, at least, won't have his number anymore. Always a plus. _

_ He goes for a shower before he starts packing. Clean body clean mind, get organized. Fucking get it together. _

_ And as the steam hits the glass screen, he sees it written there with the edge of the soap. "No rest for the wicked, Uncle Jim." And two little Xs. Kisses, at first, goodbye pecks on the cheek, until the steam outlines the little smile drawn beneath them with the tongue hanging out. A single, terrible moment, one brutal little pain. But no more than that. No time for any more than that. No more time off. _

_ No rest._

* * *

><p><em>[AN - And so we came to the end, ladies and gents. I hope you've enjoyed. Whether you have or you haven't, I'm always glad to hear a Yay or a Nay, especially here at the end. I don't usually truffle-hog for reviews, but here I am and i guess that's what I'm doing. Naughty Sal, slap wrist. Anyway, much thanks to all you good good people who've been here all this time. I honestly never thought anybody would follow this, but it's never been so nice to be wrong. I'm going to stop rambling now, finally. Go and find my own voice again, wherever I stowed it... Check behind the Pringles, maybe... Hm... Wish me luck with that. Hearts and hugs to all, Sal.]_


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